The Stats Guy: The social demographics of same-sex couples, as revealed by the Census


The Census can tell us more than we expected about our society. Photo: TND/Getty
This week and next we will explore what the Australian Census can tell us about same-sex relationships. We will learn about the social aspects today, and next week we will look at the world of work.
The Australian Census doesn’t ask about our sexual orientation. It does, however, ask about relationships within the household. When two adults of the same sex live in a household and claim to live with their partner we can conclude that they are in a same-sex relationship (the Census boffins call this the same-sex indicator).
We have no way of knowing about the sexual orientation of singles or younger people. Same-sex couples that live in separate dwellings might slip through the cracks too. Also, any fluidity in sexual orientation remains invisible to the Census.
Since same-sex marriage is a new thing in Australia, we ignore all legal marriages along with all single people for today’s column and solely focus on de facto relationships.
While this methodology isn’t perfect it still allows us to unearth heaps of interesting stuff. Our sample of same-sex couples consists of more than107,000 people. Millennials (born 1982-99 were aged 22-39 at the 2021 Census) make up 51 per cent of all same-sex de facto couples.