Mistakes made on some 2010 census forms led the U.S. Census Bureau to report an "artificially inflated" number of same-sex households in August, census officials said Tuesday.
While the Census Bureau reported 901,997 same-sex households nationally in August, new calculations of the 2010 census indicate there are 648,464 such households.
In Illinois, the same-sex household total was revised downward from 32,469 to 23,049. The revised state number is less than 1 percent more than the 22,887 figure reported in the 2000 census. Using the original census figures, the Tribune in August reported the statewide increase was 40 percent.
"What went wrong is something that we have known about for some time," said UCLA School of Law demographer Gary Gates, whom the census called in to review the revised figures for accuracy.
Unclear census forms led heterosexual couples in some cases to check boxes identifying themselves as same-sex couples, Gates said.
"There are something like 60 million different-sex (heterosexual) couples in the U.S., and if five or six per thousand make a mistake, the data come in looking like there are far more same-sex couples," said Gates, who studies sexual orientation as it pertains to law and public policy.
The census said its revised estimate of married same-sex households nationally is 131,729, well below the August count of 349,377. The revised estimates show there are 514,735 unmarried same-sex households, down from the 552,620 August total.
"As scientists, we noticed the inconsistency and developed the revised estimates to provide a more accurate portrait of the number of same-sex couples," Robert Graves, director of the Census Bureau, said in a statement.
When the census totals were released in August, many in the gay and lesbian community thought they indicated more same-sex couples were comfortable in identifying their sexual orientation.
The revised numbers don't reflect that, but Gates said similar mistakes may have been made in 2000.
"In August, the figures showed the increase nationally in same-sex households to be in the neighborhood of 50 percent, and I really think that increase is probably about right if we had corrected figures for the 2000 census too," he said.
