Economic impact of gay marriage in Iowa, other states

The Des Moines Register has a great feed for its gay marriage-related stories, linked here.

My favorite article so far? The economic impact of gay marriage. There are the obvious benefits, such as wedding expenses. But there are less intuitive ones too, such as reductions of Medicare expenses, as couples are able to support each other financially, and higher taxes for jointly-filing couples. The decision could "yield an estimated net gain of $5.3 million per year for Iowa state government." Not huge, but not negligible.

Also included in the UCLA study is the "predict[ion] that 2,917 same-sex Iowa couples will wed in the three years after the marriages are allowed to proceed. In addition, nearly 55,000 out-of-state couples could come to Iowa to get married." Sure, these are estimates, but that's an amazing number of couples who could enter the mainstream and be granted legal marriage licenses!

(Day 297)