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Urban Migration of Sexual Minorities in the United States: Myth or Reality?

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Abstract

It is often suggested that sexual minorities in the United States, especially gay men and lesbian women, move to urban areas at a higher rate than heterosexual individuals. Existing analyses of this claim are limited for one or more reasons, such as only examining patterns of current residential context without considering movement between contexts or only examining movement for partnered sexual minorities. Utilizing the General Social Survey, a probability survey of the US adult population, we compare patterns of residential context in childhood and adulthood for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual individuals. Initial findings do suggest that gay and lesbian individuals are slightly more likely than heterosexual individuals to reside in more urban areas as adults. However, this difference is explained away by the more urban childhood contexts of gay or lesbian individuals relative to heterosexual individuals. In sum, we find no robust sexuality effect on urban migration.

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Notes

  1. These data are publicly available at http://www.gss.norc.org/.

  2. Some studies using GSS data from before 2008 measured sexual orientation through questions about the sex of individuals’ sexual partners (Sherkat 2002). However, as Black et al. (2000) note, it is much more valuable to have an explicit question about sexual identity.

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The authors did not receive funding to conduct this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University, PO Box 6326, Morgantown, WV, 25606, USA

    Christopher P. Scheitle & Sara K. Guthrie

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  1. Christopher P. Scheitle
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  2. Sara K. Guthrie
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Correspondence to Christopher P. Scheitle.

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Author Scheitle declares that he has no conflict of interest. Author Guthrie declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The data used in this research come from the General Social Survey (GSS), which is publicly available at gss.norc.org. Informed consent is obtained from all GSS participants. This research is in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Scheitle, C.P., Guthrie, S.K. Urban Migration of Sexual Minorities in the United States: Myth or Reality?. Sexuality & Culture 23, 96–111 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-018-9544-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-018-9544-0

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