An Updated Data Portrait of Heterosexual, Gay/Lesbian, Bisexual, and Other Sexual Minorities in the United States

Abstract

Sexual minorities are a rapidly growing population, with recent estimates showing a two-fold increase in the percentage of sexual minorities over the past decade. Working with relatively few measures to identify sexual minorities, social scientists have amassed an impressive amount of evidence on inequality by sexuality. Despite this remarkable work, I argue that it is important to take a step back analytically and re-assess sexual minorities from a descriptive standpoint. Using population-level data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, I provide unadjusted estimates of sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and family characteristics by sexual identity. Results reveal that sexual minorities are younger, are more racially diverse, and concentrate in different parts of the country than heterosexuals. Similarly, sexual minorities have remarkably different socioeconomic lives than heterosexuals, who enjoy higher annual household incomes, achieve higher educational attainment, and are more likely to be homeowners. Sexual minorities are also less likely to be married than heterosexuals. I conclude by highlighting that descriptive research can illuminate compositional differences between sexual minorities and heterosexuals; provide rationales for adjusting for certain characteristics that might confound relationships between sexual identity and numerous outcomes; and highlight potential explanatory mechanisms to make better sense of well-established findings regarding sexual minority disadvantage.