By Marisa Taylor
LGBT people of color face a high risk of suffering from poverty because of discrimination and lack of strong legal protections, according to a new report released on Thursday.
An estimated 3 million American adults identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people of color, according to the report co-authored by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, a think tank, and the LGBT-focused advocacy group the Movement Advancement Project.
Black, Latino, Native American and Asian LGBT people are more likely to be poor than white LGBT people, the report said, with transgender people suffering from poverty most of all.
“Disproportionate numbers of LGBT people of color live in places that lack any explicit state-level protections for LGBT people,” Ineke Mushovic, executive director of the Movement Advancement Project, said in a release. “This means that LGBT people of color face a high risk of economic harm from anti-LGBT laws.”
While the report (PDF) said research in this area is limited, LGBT people of color are more likely than white LGBT people to suffer from poverty. For example, black Americans in same-sex couples are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than those in opposite-sex married couples.