Recent Marriages to Same-sex and Different-sex Couples: Mobility, Region, Home Ownership, and Household Income, 2023

Family Profile No. 19, 2025
Authors: Christopher A. Julian, Krista K. Westrick-Payne, & Wendy D. Manning

June 26, 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in the United States. This Family Profile examines newlywed same-sex and different-sex couples, focusing on geographic and economic indicators: residential mobility, census region, homeownership, and household income. This analysis updates a prior profile (FP-23-28; Westrick-Payne & Manning, 2023) using the American Community Survey, 1-year estimates 2023 from IPUMS USA (Ruggles et al., 2024). We identified couples using the revised household relationship roster (Kreider & Gurrentz, 2019), which limited the sample to couples that included the household reference person. Some figures display 95% confidence intervals. Because the ACS captures current status rather than timing, we cannot determine the sequencing of marriage, residential moves, geographic location, or homeownership within the past year. Find our other Family Profiles on LGBTQ+ relationships here.

Recent Marriages

  • According to the ACS, in 2023, there were 39,000 marriages to same-sex female couples, 34,000 to same-sex male couples, and 1.8 million to different-sex couples.
  • About 2.0% of marriages in 2023 were to female same-sex couples and 1.7% were to male same-sex couples, reflecting similar shares to those in 2022 (Westrick-Payne & Manning, 2023).

Movers

  • Newlywed different-sex couples were more likely to have moved in the last year (34%) than both newlywed same-sex male and female couples.
  • Similar shares of same-sex male and same-sex female newlywed couples moved in the last year, 19% and 18%, respectively.

Figure 1. Sex Composition of Recently Married Couples, 2023

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Figure 2. Movers by Sex Composition of Recently Married Couples, 2023 

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Note: *Differences are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level

Source: NCFMR analyses of Community Survey, 1-year estimates 2023 from IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org

Census Region

  • Newlywed same-sex and different-sex couples were similarly distributed across census regions. Across all three types of newlywed couples, most (37%-40%) lived in the South and lower shares lived in the Northeast.

Homeownership

  • About half of all newlyweds (49% - 55%) were homeowners, regardless of couple type.

Figure 3. Census Region of Residence by Sex Composition of Recently Married Couples, 2023

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Figure 4. Homeowners by Sex Composition of Recently Married Couples, 2023

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Source: NCFMR analyses of Community Survey, 1-year estimates 2023 from IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org

Household Income

  • Same-sex married male couples had a significantly higher mean household income ($182,732) than both different-sex married couples ($131,577) and same-sex married female couples ($122,025).
  • Income levels for different-sex and same-sex female couples were similar.

Figure 5. Mean Household Income by Sex Composition of Recently Married Couples, 2023

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Source: NCFMR analyses of Community Survey, 1-year estimates 2023 from IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org

Data Source
Ruggles, S., Flood, S., Sobek, M., Backman, D., Chen, A., Cooper, G., Richards, S., Rodgers, R., & Schouweiler, M. (2024). IPUMS USA: Version 15.0 [Dataset]. IPUMS. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V15.0

References
Kreider, R. M., & Gurrentz, B. (2019). Updates to collection and editing of household relationship measures in the Current Population Survey. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2019/demo/SEHSD-WP-2018-30.pdf.

Westrick-Payne, K. K., & Manning, W. D. (2023). Recent marriages to same-sex and different-sex couples: Mobility, region, home ownership, and household income, 2022. Family Profiles, FP-23-28. Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research. https://doi.org/10.25035/ncfmr/fp-23-28

Suggested Citation
Julian, C. A., Westrick-Payne, K. K., & Manning, W. D. (2025). Recent marriages to same-sex and different-sex couples: Mobility, region, home ownership, and household income, 2023. Family Profiles, FP-25-19. Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research. https://doi.org/10.25035/ncfmr/fp-25-19

This project is supported with assistance from Bowling Green State University. From 2007 to 2013, support was also provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s) and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policy of any agency of the state or federal government.

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Updated: 06/13/2025 12:16PM