New study sees financial struggles among LGBT Americans

From a news release

Gallup today released a new study authored by Williams Distinguished Scholar Gary J. Gates, Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, showing that LGBT individuals, particularly LGBT women, are less likely to be thriving across a range of measures of their health and well-being.

For example, the analyses show that nearly 4 in 10 non-LGBT adults (39%) indicated that they were thriving in their financial lives compared to less than 3 in 10 LGBT adults (29%). This 10 percentage point difference represented the biggest gap between the proportion of LGBT and non-LGBT adults who indicated that they were thriving across multiple measures of well-being analyzed in this study.

The gap among women was 12 percentage points (39% thriving among non-LGBT women compared to 27% among LGBT women) compared to an 8 percentage point difference among men (40% for non-LGBT men and 32% among LGBT men). The study shows that these differences persist even when demographic and geographic characteristics (gender, age, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, state of residence, population density) are taken into account.

Study author Gates notes that, “Consistent with other recent research, analyses of the Gallup data confirm that LGBT adults, particularly women, frequently report lower levels of health and well-being when compared to their non-LGBT counterparts. While social acceptance toward LGBT Americans has improved in this country, the LGBT community still too frequently experiences discrimination and stigma that negatively effects their financial, physical, and emotional health.”

The analyses are based on 2,964 interviews with LGBT adults (aged 18 and older) and 81,134 interviews with non-LGBT adults conducted from Jan.1-June 23, 2014 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which includes questions that fall into five broad areas: purpose, community, physical, financial and social. Each of these well-being elements consists of multiple questions on related topics that Gallup uses to categorize respondents as thriving, struggling, and suffering. These Gallup data represent the largest survey of health and well-being that allows for identification of LGBT respondents.

Gates observes that, “These analyses highlight the need for more research to understand the relationship between health and well-being and sexual orientation and gender identity. We need to document not just that health disparities exist, but figure out why those who identify as LGBT experience so many negative outcomes. Increased data collection that includes measurement of sexual orientation and gender identity is vital to guiding such research and improving the ability of leaders to develop and implement programs designed to close the negative well-being gaps that exist between LGBT and non-LGBT populations.”

Other important findings from the new study include:

On an overall Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index scaled from 0 (worst) to 100 (best), LGBT respondents had an average score of 58 compared to 62 among non-LGBT individuals.

Just over a quarter (26%) of LGBT adults were thriving in measures of their physical well-being compared to a third (33%) of their non-LGBT counterparts.

LGBT adults were less likely than non-LGBT adults to indicate that their social lives (35% v. 41%, respectively), communities (32% v. 38%, respectively), and sense of purpose (33% v. 37%, respectively) were thriving.

LGBT women were particularly disadvantaged when compared to non-LGBT women with regard to thriving in their physical well-being (24% v. 36%, respectively), community well-being (31% v. 40%), and sense of purpose (32% v. 40%, respectively). LGBT men were not very different from their non-LGBT counterparts in these measures.

The full report is available at the link: www.gallup.com/poll/175418/lgbt-americans-report-lower.aspx.