Same-sex couple households increase over 70% in Chicago since 2005, new Census data shows

Kim Ricardo and her wife are representative of a growth of same-sex couple households, which new U.S. Census Bureau data shows has nearly doubled nationally in the last 19 years. In Chicago, it's up 72% in that time.

Ricardo, 48, met her wife, Katerine, while traveling in Argentina 10 years ago.

“She's actually Cuban, but was living in Argentina,” Ricardo said. “We met dancing at a tango milonga.”

They live in River North and have created a robust community around them. They’ll soon celebrate nine years of marriage, and they welcomed a baby girl in September.

Ricardo is Filipino-American, a law professor at University of Illinois Chicago and a vice chair of the Chicago Dance Makers Forum. She moved to Chicago in 2008 and recalled a conversation she had with her realtor as they looked at homes in Andersonville.

“She said this is like 'girlstown,' and I was like, ‘I don't think so,’" Ricardo recalled “I didn't see evidence of that.”

Having lived in Chicago for the last 18 years she said she does see a big change both in society and in the law.

“Chicago is really a good way to map changes in society,” Ricardo said. “When I first moved to Chicago and I joined the law school, there was no civil union, there was no domestic partnership.”

The new U.S. Census Bureau data shows same-sex couple households in the U.S. went up 78% since 2005, with most of the growth happening in the last 10 years. The survey uses American Community Survey one-year estimates for all years between 2005 and 2024. It showed about 1.4 million same-sex couple households in the United States in 2024.

According to the data, within Chicago's defined community areas, the two locations with the highest percentage of same-sex couple households are the area including Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park followed by the Lake View and Lincoln Park area.

While nationally female same-sex couple households outnumber male same-sex couple households, the numbers show more male same-sex couple households in Chicago, and more female in the suburbs and rest of the state.

In Chicago same-sex couples make up 1.7% of all couples. It's about 0.75% in the rest of Illinois.

Changes in how the Census Bureau tracks same-sex couple households

The rise in the count of same-sex couple households nationwide could reflect a more accurate representation of couples living together across the country. But experts point to various factors that can contribute to the jump in the data — from the evolution of Census survey methods to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

In 1990 the U.S. Census survey began asking respondents about their sex, their age and their relationship to the household head, said Christine Percheski, an associate professor of sociology at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. They included a category for unmarried partners, so respondents could identify same sex partners, if they were the same sex partner of the household head.

“They improved some of the wording and categories, and they've changed some of them over time,” Percheski said. “Between 1990 and 2000 we saw that category almost double in that first 10 years but remember, that's before same-sex marriage is legal in any of the states.”

Percheski points to widespread discrimination against same-sex couples during that time. It was also before states recognized civil unions for same-sex couples, and before many of the protections for people who identify as LGBTQ+.

“There were some ways that we could see some of this in some Census surveys and some Census data, but there were reasons that people weren't publicly identifying or marking themselves as an unmarried partner," Percheski said.

In Chicago, between 2014 and 2024, the number of same-sex couples identifying as married grew by 95% compared to an increase of 15% for opposite sex-couples.

This aligns with what was happening on the policy level in Illinois and nationwide. Illinois’ Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act took effect in June of 2014, allowing same-sex marriage and giving same-sex couples legal rights and protections. Then in 2015, U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The ruling required all states to license and recognize same-sex marriages, overturning all existing state bans.

Percheski believes the newly released numbers could still not be showing an accurate picture of the status of households in the U.S.

“There are also concerns about the safety of LGBTQ folks and people in same sex couples,” Percheski said. “It's always a bit of a dance because we want to fix the technical errors leading to the wrong numbers, but we also have to acknowledge that some people might not want to be reporting on government surveys because of concerns about their safety or discrimination.”

Do same-sex couples feel represented in new Census numbers?

Ricardo said she does struggle with the two conflicting options. On one hand she wants to see families like hers reflected on government surveys and forms but she worries about how politicians will use that information.

“I think that trans folks are subject to some of the most sort of hateful violence, and our leaders in public office are not willing to do anything to try to remedy that,” Ricardo said. “In fact, I think they try to capitalize on some of the division that's created in order to just score political points.”

Ricardo said former President Barack Obama's administration tried to create a more diverse and fluid language when it came to the Census and how the government talked about families and identities like hers, but now she sees a backlash.

“We saw in Trump’s first administration and in the second Trump administration an effort to kind of silence or eliminate that vocabulary. What it threatens to do is to erase the legibility of families like mine from our social text,” Ricardo said. “Taking away that language and making it suspect, taking away just the simple thing of my ‘pronouns are’ is really disheartening but it has the effect of erasing people and communities.”

During President Donald Trump's first term, his administration blocked efforts to get questions about sexual orientation and gender identity onto a Census Bureau survey. Former President Joe Biden later renewed that process to quell advocates' calls to add questions that would identify people’s sexual orientation, gender identity and household. The Trump administration has since paused those efforts.

Phyllis Johnson, 76, and her wife, Barbra Smith, first met at a potluck brunch group. Johnson co-created the brunch group Women of All Cultures Together in the early 1990s so lesbian women could meet and create community.

After knowing each other a few years, Johnson and Smith began a romantic relationship and moved in together in 2008 and eventually married. Johnson said if they had the opportunity to identify their same-sex household status on any census survey they would.

“I was a late bloomer, I came out in my 40s,” Johnson said.

When Johnson and Smith began dating, they each lived in their own home but they would often talk about retiring somewhere warm. One day a mutual friend asked them if they were ever going to live together before retirement.

“It just never crossed our minds that I'd move in with her, which would have been perfect,” Johnson recalled.

When they finally did move in together in Roseland on the South Side, their neighbors asked questions.

“‘OK, are you cousins? Are you sisters? What are you?’" Johnson said. “Gay never came up, lesbian never came up. That was not the vocabulary. In the early 2000s there was still a ton of social pressure. But that remarkably changed by the time you get to 2020.”

Still, Johnson, whose wife died in 2015, does not see many same-sex couples in their neighborhood. She said there are still very conservative pockets among the Black community.

“I know a lot of people that are estranged from their families because of their sexual identity and their gender identity,” Johnson said. “I think in general, society is much more open, but I think there's some hotbeds of social conservatism at least in the Black community.”

She said knowing and seeing the option to identify as a same-sex couple household on the U.S. Census survey does make her feel seen but that could change.

“I know people, my peer groups that go back in the closet when they require nursing home services,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the number didn't go backwards after the Trump administration because he's going to be in office until '28 and it's right on top of the census.”

Percheski said the data from the survey is a start but how the data is gathered is important. She said the survey is not designed to study same-sex couples across the country.

“It's designed to gather data that is used by lots of different parties, including local government officials, who are trying to figure out how many schools and local government, local employers and people designing employment,” Percheski said. “We can study same sex couple households in this data but to get at the nuance [of same-sex couples], we might have to add a lot more questions.”

Ricardo says they have noticed more same-sex couples cohabiting in their River North neighborhood, especially more diverse couples.

“I think that that's a huge change. You just see a bigger group of young people, racially diverse, ethnically diverse, and I think that's really nice to see,” Ricardo said. “I come to Chicago from living in lots of different places. It's nice to see Asian American queers out.”

Data from Chicago indicates a significant rise in mixed-race, same-sex couple households from 9% in 2005 to 36% in 2024.

“I think it is a result of our changing societal norms and also our laws protecting same sex couples and queer people rights in general,” Ricardo said.