Same-Sex Unmarried Partners in the Census

The Census began identifying same-sex couple households in 1990. However, issues arise when using data for the Census because it is possible that opposite-sex couples make mistakes while filing out the Census and get recorded as same-sex couple households. Researchers have developed methods to edit the recorded count of same-sex couple households in order to obtain a more accurate count. However, the methods used to edit the data vary. This paper discusses the treatment of same-sex couple households and the different editing procedures used in the Census. The goal of this paper is to allow researchers to confidently use Census data in future analyses on same-sex couple households.