LOS ANGELES – Data from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law show that New Hampshire’s decision to extend marriage to same-sex couples will bring an economic windfall to the State. With five New England states now recognizing marriage for same-sex couples, the entire region will experience an overall economic boost of almost $400 million.
Approximately half of New Hampshire’s same-sex couples, or 4,703 couples, will marry within three years. Their weddings will generate over $14.5 million in new spending.
New Hampshire joins four other New England states in extending marriage to same-sex couples. Below we also present our estimates of the number of couples expected to marry in Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont and the revenue their weddings will bring to each state over three years. For Massachusetts, we use official marriage counts from the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics and survey data to measure their actual wedding spending. We estimate the total wedding spending of couples who live in New England to top $163 million.
In addition to those weddings, we project that 75,000 same-sex couples from other states will travel to the New England region to marry. Over 24,000 of these couples will come from New York since their out-of-state marriage will be officially recognized at home. We estimate that each out-of-state couple will spend $3,000 while in New England on wedding and other tourist expenditures, which will result in a total of $228 million in new spending for the region. Combined with in-state couples, wedding spending in New England will total approximately $391.3 million.
The Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy advances law and public policy through rigorous, independent research and scholarship, and disseminates its work through a variety of education programs and media to judges, legislators, lawyers, other policymakers and the public. This study can be accessed at the Williams Institute website, www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute.
No comments:
Post a Comment