Gay marriage will pump more than $50 million into Arizona economy

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Stefano Bolognini / Wikimedia Commons

NerdWallet estimates gay marriage will pump in excess of $50 million into Arizona's economy.

Danika Worthington

Editorial intern- Phoenix Business Journal

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Gay marriage could add more than $50 million a year to Arizona's economy in the long term, according to a study by NerdWallet Inc., a data-driven financial analysis company.

Analyst Sreekar Jasthi said he wanted to see how much additional money would be in the economy if marriage for LGBT couples were legal across the nation. He projected that local wedding industries in the U.S. would see a $2.5 billion boost.

"This is under the assumption that in the U.S., were gay marriage legal, this is what we project the average economy would be per state," Jasthi said.

The study used the percent of the LGBT population in each state, as gathered through Gallup polling, applied that to the marriage rate of individual states and then added the average cost of a wedding in that state.

In Arizona, 3.9 percent of the population openly identifies as LGBT. With a marriage rate of 0.8 percent and a population of 6.6 million, NerdWallet estimates an additional 2,119 marriages a year in Arizona. The average cost of a wedding in Arizona is $25,332.

Add that all together, and NerdWallet concluded that marriages between LGBT people could add $53.7 million annually to Arizona's economy.

Although economic impact numbers have been released for states that have already legalized gay marriage, Jasthi said those data don't represent the long run impact due to the jump in marriages immediately following legalization.

Jasthi said a couple of assumptions were made to conduct the study — first, that LGBT couples would marry at the same rate as opposite-sex couples in the same state; and second, that same-sex couples would spend the same amount as opposite-sex couples.

The study does not include federal spending or tax implications.