Economy could see $57m in first year alone from wedding arrangements made by gay couples already living in the state
Washington state could be in line for a windfall of up to $88m as a direct result of legalising gay marriage, a report has revealed.
The economy could see the cash come in over the next three years, with $57m possible in the first year alone, from wedding arrangements made by resident gay and lesbian couples, and tourism dollars from their out-of-state guests – but the figures do not include the impact of couples who would travel to Washington to marry.
According to the report by the Williams Institute, a same-sex focused thinktank at the University of California (UCLA) School of Law, legalising gay marriage would also likely to add $8m in sales tax revenue to state and local coffers, $5m of which will come in the first year.
Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, says data from states that already allow gay marriage reveal that, on average, about half of same-sex couples tend to marry within the first three years.
An estimated 19,000 same-sex couples live in Washington.
Given that Washington already permits domestic partnerships, Badgett, also a research director for the Williams Institute, says that all of the couples may not have "big, splashy weddings".
Assuming that all of the 7,518 existing Washington resident same-sex couples registered as domestic partners were to marry without holding a celebration, wedding spending would spike approximately $18m over the first three years, with a sales tax revenue of $1.6m.
Washington could use the money: the state's revenue shortfall for the current two-year budget is nearly $1bn, and it is currently seeking to make up revenues of more than $1.5bn, according to the state's office of financial management.
Not everyone is quite so optimistic. "Much of the spending by Washington residents would take place anyway, if not on weddings, then on something else," said William B Beyers, who teaches economic geography at the University of Washington. "The real economic impacts are related to new money, money coming into the state that would not come here without this legislation."
Washington's vote came a day after a federal appeals court declared California's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, ruling it a violation of the civil rights of gay and lesbian couples.
In California – which has the nation's largest population of same-sex couples at almost 100,000 – the Williams Institute estimates that legalizing same-sex marriage will bring about an economic boost of at least $290m in direct spending during the first three years, creating or sustaining about 2,600 jobs.
California allowed same-sex couples to marry for a brief period of time in 2008. Jennifer Pizer, the Williams Institute's legal director, estimates that California saw about 18,000 weddings in the five-month window between the overturning of Proposition 22 and the passage of Proposition 8, and that the state will see another spike in marriage if Prop 8 is upheld.
"Our estimates are of people who want to have a ceremony and celebration because of the emotional meaning of marriage that doesn't come with a domestic partnership," says Pizer, who married her partner in 2008. "Our survey data confirms that it is quite common that people understand marriage as different from a partnership."