The U.S. Census Bureau confirmed Tuesday that it had
“artificially inflated the number of same-sex couples” to about 40 percent more than was accurate in the 2010 head count, reports CNSNews.com.
The mix-up resulted from the layout of census forms and the way the data was mined. The placement of the gender check-off boxes made it easy for respondents to accidentally identify themselves as the wrong gender, which led to the inflated number.
The originally reported data estimated same-sex households at 0.77 percent of the population, just over 900,000 households. That number has been revised down to 0.55 percent, or just under 650,000. That’s up from just below 600,000 in the 2000 census.
“After discovering the inconsistency, Census Bureau staff developed another set of estimates to provide a more accurate way to measure same-sex couple households,” the Census Bureau reported in a news release.
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