Using US Census Data to help the LGBTQIA+ Community
Hello everyone. I was at Family Week last week in Provincetown, hosted by Family Equity. This is an amazing program where we were able to hang out with other queer families for a whole week. As a four year old, my son mostly cared about the activities, face painting, and the balloons but it will be nice as he grows up. This was our fourth year going. Below is my shirt that I wear every year (Nate has a similar one which says “I’m Daddy, he’s Abba”.
This week, I wanted to talk about data (shocker, right?). The US Census is something we often think about every ten years for the national census, but there are many other programs within the US Census Bureau. This can be an fantastic resource for nonprofits when discussing your local community. Importantly (for this newsletter), the US Census has a lot of resources around the LGBTQIA+ community. Since 2021, there has been a push at the US Census toward using data to advance equity.
One example of publicly accessible data through the US Census Bureau is the Household Pulse Survey, which provides important information on issues impacting US Households, such as food insecurity, employment, health, housing, spending, arts and entertainment, and natural disasters. They break down the information into demographic data, which includes sexual orientation (gay or lesbian, straight, bisexual, something else, I don’t know, and Did not report) and gender identity and expression (cisgender male, cisgender female, transgender, none of these, and did not report) as well as a LGBT catch-all. The data is also broken down by state. For example, if I wanted to know about food sufficiency in Alabama by sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, I can easily see on the excel documents:
All of the tables since 2020 can be found here. Updated monthly, the most recent cycle (May 28-June 24) can be found here. This allows you to look at the data over time and see how it has or has not changed. This is particularly helpful if you want to better understand the impacts of various laws and bills in your state.
Why is this important? As many of you all know, I love data and data analysis. When talking about why LGBTQIA+ rights and social services are important, information from the Household Pulse Survey can show inequities and issues that the LGBTQIA+ community face, in your home state. Data like this can be used to apply for grants or discuss the need of specific programming to stakeholders. It also allows you, as an organization, to better understand the basic issues that the LGBTQIA+ community within your state is facing, including some short-term trends. I recommend taking some time to play around with this data. If you have any questions about it, feel free to let me know!