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Eye-opening new research suggests that children raised by same-sex couples do better in school than those raised by opposite-sex couples. These findings are based on a recent study conducted by European economists.
Researchers concluded that children raised by same-sex couples scored higher test results in elementary and secondary school than children raised by opposite-sex couples. And that’s not all. According to the study’s authors, children raised by same-sex couple are also about 7 percent more likely to graduate from high school.
“Our findings indicate that children particularly benefit from same-sex couples compared to opposite-sex couples if the couple is cohabiting rather than married,” the researchers explained. “Further, we also find that children from same-sex couples continue to outperform children from opposite-sex couples in secondary education. Our results suggest that children from same-sex couples are 6.7 percent more likely to graduate than children from opposite-sex couples.”
In the past, similar studies haven’t yielded much in the way of useful information, given that the sample size was limited to only a few dozen kids. This study, however, is based on 1,200 children raised by same-sex couples. Their academic performance was compared to more than 1 million children raised by opposite-sex couples.
Researchers did stipulate that the higher test results could be attributed to income as opposed to the guardians’ sexual orientation. Previous studies have shown that access to resources is one of the main predicators of success.
“Our results mostly support the selection approach stating that given the time-consuming and costly procedures for same-sex couples to obtain children, same-sex parents typically have a high socioeconomic status resulting in higher parental investment,” the researchers wrote.
Indeed, there proved to be a much smaller gap in test scores when economists controlled for income. Nevertheless, children of same-sex couples still had slightly higher test scores.