Cause and effect of legalizing gay marriage

Twenty years after the first marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples in Massachusetts, this brief describes the effects of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples in the United States on LGBT individuals and their children. Short abstract It has been 20 years since the first marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples in Massachusetts, and there has been ample time for researchers to study the consequences of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; their children; and the general population.

The authors of this study document those consequences. An emerging body of literature suggests a positive association between legal same-sex marriage and improved health outcomes. Similar policies have diffused throughout other countries, especially in western Europe and the Americas. Researchers have used the staggered rollout of legal same-sex marriage and related policies in the U.S.

and elsewhere, along with improved data on lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, to study the effects of marriage equality. Abstract I provide evidence on the direct effects of legal same-sex marriage in the United States by studying Massachusetts, the first state to legalize it in by court order. Using confidential Massachusetts data from –, I show that the ruling significantly increased marriage among lesbians, bisexual women, and gay men compared with the associated change for heterosexuals.

I. Second, we question whether marriage stabilized its preceding registered partnership. Relationships that made the transition to marriage became more stable.

Symbolism matters: The effect of same-sex marriage legalisation on partnership stability | CEPR

Through unique individual identification numbers, we are able to link the health survey sample to the administrative micro-data of Statistics Netherlands, in order to identify the sexual orientation of individuals. Registered partnerships established after the same-sex marriage law are as likely to separate but less likely to transform to marriage, which is clearly related to the choice couples had to marry immediately rather than start with a registered partnership.

Acceptance of same-sex relationships varies substantially by country. If so, is that improvement the causal effect of getting married or merely the selectivity of stable couples into partnership?

Reasons why same-sex marriage should be legalized essay

Same-sex marriage legalisation SSML is a typical anti-discrimination policy to remove institutional discrimination against sexual minorities by providing them with marriage equality. As part of structural changes in partnership formations and family institutions, countries around the world have started to accept and formalise same-sex relationships to the extent that some of them have legalised same-sex marriages.

In recent decades, marriage has been deinstitutionalized, its legal and economic functions impaired or replaced by other types of relationships. Using a bivariate hazard rate model with marriage and separation as competing risks, and allowing marriage to directly affect the separation rate, we find that same-sex marriage legalisation caused a number of registered partnerships to separate. That is both unnecessary and carries the risk of weakening the legal structure designed to encourage the attachment of children to their natural mother and father.

Although the extent of discrimination against sexual minorities varies across countries and regions, there is no doubt about the existence of this type of discrimination in the labour market and other situations Bertrand and Duflo , Badgett et al.

We conclude that SSML closed the sexual orientation gap of mental health more completely among women, residents in low urban regions, younger people, and college degree holders. For a long time, sexual minorities have been discriminated against in different situations, including the right of marriage. We rely on the administrative individual and household micro-data to identify sexual minority and different-sex relationships by comparing the gender s of the two partners in a household.

Clearly, attitudes have become more favourable in all countries presented. For individuals in different-sex relationships, both depression and anxiety exhibit mild fluctuations across years. We also find that marriage itself was only partially responsible for the amelioration of mental health among sexual minorities. VoxEU Column.

There has existed a substantial mental health gap in sexual orientation that may be attributed to either actual or perceived discrimination against sexual minorities. Our main interest is twofold. To illustrate the nature of our data, we present survival functions of same-sex registered partnerships and marriages in Figure 1, with Panel a showing same-sex female relationships and Panel b same-sex male relationships.

The variations in mental health for individuals in same-sex relationships present a different pattern. Registered partnerships recorded before same-sex marriage legalisation are less likely to survive. Individuals that established both different-sex and same-sex relationships are included in the sexual minority group while people who did not register any relationship during the whole administrative data period are excluded in our main analysis.

Moreover, the legislation stabilised same-sex formal partnerships and enlarged the choice set of same-sex partnership forms, which may contribute to the mental health gains of sexual minorities. It was rushed through parliament with "indecent haste", he says, without a royal commission, an in-depth inquiry, or any mention in the manifesto. Similar decriminalisation was introduced in in Scotland and in in Northern Ireland.