Census data shows LGBT Americans hit harder by economic, food insecurity amid pandemic

U.S. Census Bureau data released this week revealed that LGBT Americans have reported larger rates of economic and food insecurity amid the coronavirus pandemic than Americans who do not identify as members of the community. 

The findings came in the latest Household Pulse Survey, which the Census Bureau first launched in April 2020 to measure U.S. household experiences during the pandemic.

This week’s report is the first to include data on gender identity and sexual orientation. 

The data, which was collected from July 21 to Aug. 2, found that nearly 20 percent of LGBT adults reported a loss of income in the previous four weeks, compared to about 17 percent of non-LGBT adults. 

Additionally, about 13 percent of adults who identified as LGBT said they lived in a household where there was either sometimes or often not enough food available to eat within the past week, compared to roughly 7 percent of non-LGBT adults. 

LGBT Americans were also more likely to report issues of covering basic expenses and other living costs, with nearly 37 percent saying they lived in a house that “had difficulty paying for usual household expenses” in the previous week. 

Comparatively, 26 percent of non-LGBT adults reported challenges in paying for household expenses. 

In homes that were rented or owned with a mortgage or loan, 8 percent of LGBT adults said they were not confident they would be able to meet their next housing payment, while 6 percent of non-LGBT Americans said the same. 

The latest data, which came from survey responses from a total of more than 64,000 U.S. households, suggests that the coronavirus pandemic may be exacerbating the financial challenges among LGBT Americans, who even before COVID-19 hit had already been more likely to experience greater financial hardship than non-LGBT people. 

For example, a 2019 study from the Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement and Research found that during that time, about 20 percent of LGBT households did not have high confidence that they would pay their bills that month, compared to 14 percent of households that did not identify as LGBT. 

The pandemic has also exacerbated existing financial disparities among several other groups, including Latinas, who left the workforce at a higher rate than any other demographic group during the pandemic, according to research released in June by the University of California-Los Angeles’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

Additionally, the study found that Hispanic and Black women saw unemployment rates almost double what white women experienced by the end of 2020.