Benefits of Marriage Equality

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Same-sex couples have been getting married for five years now in Massachusetts. Gary Gates of UCLA's Williams Institute has done the number-crunching and identifies intriguing economic benefits.

"Data from the American Community Survey suggest that marriage equality has a small but positive impact on the number of individuals in same-sex couples who are attracted to a state. However, marriage equality appears to have a larger impact on the types of individuals in same-sex couples who are attracted to a state. In Massachusetts, marriage equality resulted in an increase of younger, female, and more highly educated and skilled individuals in same-sex couples moving to the state... The evidence that marriage equality may enhance the ability of Massachusetts to attract highly skilled creative class workers among those in same-sex couples offers some support that the policy has the potential to have a long-term positive economic impact."

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Richard Florida is Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. See his most recent writing at The Atlantic Cities. More

Florida is author of The Rise of the Creative Class, Who's Your City?, and The Great Reset. He is founder of the Creative Class Group.

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