Although LGBTQ people appear to be distributed equally within socioeconomic classes in the United States, a disproportionate number of LGBTQ individuals are impoverished, even when controlling for factors associated with poverty, like race, religion, ethnicity, and education.
Discrimination at Home
The reasons behind this inequity are multi-factored. First, a disproportionate number of children and young adults who identify as LGBTQ face discrimination at home. Although hopefully decreasing in frequency, LGBTQ youths face the real possibility of homelessness as teenagers when parents, guardians, and other caregivers reject their sexual orientation or gender identity. Because some LGBTQ youths are often secretive about their identities or struggle to understand their sexual desires, they may seek destructive behaviors, including self-harm. Such behaviors may be misinterpreted by families and guardians, again resulting in rejection and mental or physical alienation, particularly among communities that may be uniquely religious or maintain strong, conservative cultural norms regarding sexuality and gender. LGBTQ youths may be disproportionately targeted by bullies online or in person, again creating feelings of alienation, and sometimes causing the manifestation of destructive behavior. Such behaviors can lead to homelessness or can truncate meaningful learning and opportunities for advancement that could pay economic dividends later in life.
Work Discrimination
Second, LGBTQ individuals face disproportionate discrimination at work, both in hiring, salary, promotions, and firings. This ultimately leads to a disproportionate number of LGBTQ individuals to take underpaid jobs, or may result in these individuals being unemployed, or prematurely terminated. There exist few federal or state-level protections for LGBTQ individuals that prevent employment discrimination based on sexual or, particularly, gender orientation. This means that LGBTQ individuals frequently are without recompense (or, worse, are entirely unaware) when they are passed over for a job or promotion, or are fired, solely due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Even seemingly trivial matters at work, such as not being invited to an important meeting because a superior feels uncomfortable interacting with a transgender individual, can have substantial economic repercussions.
Federal Recognition
Third, until very recently, LGBTQ couples in committed, same-sex relationships, lacked state and federal recognition of their relationships, such as the ability to marry. This, and the continued lack of federal and state recognition of many types of unmarried LGBTQ relationships, mean that elderly LGBTQ individuals frequently lack the economic, societal, and cultural trappings that can assist elderly individuals whose spouse or life partner has died. For example, consider an elderly LGBTQ couple who chose never to get married because such an option was unavailable for the majority of their lives. If the couple chose not to execute a will governing the distribution of each partner’s assets after death (and, in some cases and in some states, even if they had), the surviving partner might receive none of the dying partner’s estate. This differs markedly from the treatment of opposite-sex couples who were married at the time of death, and who often will receive the majority or entirety of a partner’s assets even if the dying partner left no will. Moreover, the surviving partner of a same-sex relationship may receive none of the deceased partner’s other benefits, such as pension, social security, disability, life insurance payments, and similar that a married, opposite-sex couple would receive.
Children Rearing and Senior Housing
Finally, many LGBTQ couples, again, until relatively recently, chose or were legally prevented from raising or having children. This means that elderly LGBTQ couples frequently lack younger children and families who might, in the case of opposite-sex couples or couples otherwise with children, be able to financially support the couple later in life. Discrimination even in the realm of retirement homes or nursing facilities can have substantial impacts on wealth, leading elderly LGBTQ individuals to pay more for (or struggle to find) facilities that will accommodate them.
Race or Impoverished Families
People of color, or people born into impoverished families (or both), face unique economic challenges. These challenges are not only tied to the struggles of LGBTQ individuals, but also to endemic, and, often, systemic racism imposed on such individuals by society and by cultural norms and institutions. Numerous long-term studies in the United States have suggested that poverty can continue generationally as a quasi-inheritable state, meaning that children of impoverished parents are vastly more likely to be impoverished themselves than children of affluence. Impoverished families are often unable to offer counseling and the sort of direct attention many young LGBTQ individuals seek and require when coming to terms regarding their sexual identities and gender.
All of these factors combined paint a dismal picture and help to explain the increased incidence of poverty in LGBTQ communities. Despite this, one of the major issues facing impoverished LGBTQ individuals is the prevailing stereotype, seemingly held by many, of LGBTQ individuals as being uniquely privileged. For example, many envision gay men as living in immaculately decorated apartments in New York City, working in lavish jobs and enjoying a lifestyle devoid of children or other familial obligations. While this might be a lifestyle enjoyed by some, the presentation of gay men in the media has suggested that this lifestyle is vastly more prevalent than it actually is. As a result, conversations regarding poverty become more difficult when the general public, and even family and friends of LGBTQ individuals, envision a lifestyle widely portrayed in the media that is rarely the case. Stereotypes of gay men as being affluent and privileged are doubtlessly an improvement from the widely held stereotypes of gay men as being sexual deviants held by many for much of the 20th century. Regardless, however, these stereotypes impede meaningful dialogue that would recognize the disproportionate appearance of poverty in LGBTQ communities, including among gay men.
Moreover, the public perception of the LGBTQ community as a homogenous group of individuals both belies the obvious truth, and further hinders meaningful societal reform. For example, the struggles faced by a gay man living in San Francisco born to an affluent, progressive family may be different markedly from the struggles of a transgendered individual of Latino heritage born to Spanish speaking immigrants working as day laborers in rural Texas. Too often, policymakers, in attempting to combat societal and economic issues, group such individuals together when crafting policy choices. This often leaves the most at-need, such as the already impoverished and people of color, behind, and most in need of strong advocates to promote their causes.
Poverty and the income gap among LGBTQ individuals is a serious societal problem, requiring both political and cultural changes. As LGBTQ rights continue to progress at all levels of society, this issue is hopefully one policymaker will soon begin to address s