At his LGBTQ-friendly boutique hotel in the Chilean capital, Will Martin hopes the country’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage this month will attract newlyweds who are eager to party.
“Visibility is something people take very seriously,” Martin said on the phone from The Aubrey in Santiago. “They want to be seen, proud and open to what they do.”
But as more countries legalize same-sex weddings, researchers and LGBTQ + activists say the economic benefits of marriage equality go well beyond wedding ceremonies and honeymoons, and can give nations an important competitive advantage.
“Marital equality is still pretty rare around the world,” said MV Lee Badgett, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“It’s still something that sends a very strong signal – and it can make a huge difference to businesses and tourists,” said Badgett, who has been researching the economic impact of LGBT + integration on countries since the mid-1990s.
Chile became the 30th country to legalize same-sex marriage on December 7th, along with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay in Latin America.
“The economic case is a very powerful tool for lobbying the LGBT + rights movement,” Jon Miller, founder of Open For Business, a group of companies committed to LGBTQ + integration, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“When we show people that there are real economic benefits from more LGBT + integration, that changes the conversation.”
Big market
Denmark was the first country to legalize same-sex partnerships and passed a law recognizing “registered partnerships” in 1989, which was quickly followed by several European countries.
The Czech Republic has allowed same-sex couples to register their partnerships since 2006, but has not granted full marriage law.
A 2020 report by Open For Business suggested the central European nation is missing between $ 25 million and $ 113 million annually from income from same-sex weddings alone.
Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage in May 2019, shortly after Open For Business released a similar report on the island backed by multinational corporations like tech giants Google and Microsoft.
“Marriage for same-sex couples would help Taiwan develop its economic competitiveness and create an environment for businesses to thrive,” the report wrote.
The global LGBTQ + market is huge. Research by the global Swiss bank Credit Suisse suggests that it ranks behind Japan in terms of purchasing power, but ahead of Germany as the fourth largest economy in the world.
A 2018 study by Kantar Consulting and the LGBTQ + social network Hornet estimated the purchasing power of the community in the United States alone at $ 1 trillion in 2016 – almost equal to that of African American or Hispanic consumers.
Companies have been trying to tap into what’s called the pink pound – or dollar, peseta or renminbi – since furniture retailer IKEA first ran an ad with a gay couple in 1994.