Hardcore homophobes and playful pop culture often present the gays, especially gay men, as brunch-eating, artisanal cocktail swigging, shopping-spreeing, swinging singles with disposable income. Shockingly, this is a myth and not reality.

A new report from the Movement Advancement Project and Center for American Progress shatters the myth and reveals that LGBT actually are worse-off financially than their hetero brothers and sisters. For instance, while 39% of non-LGBT adults in the U.S. report they are thriving financially, only 29% of LGBT adults do. While 17% of non-LGBT people who live alone make less than $12,000 a year, 20.7% of LGBT people living alone earn less than $12,000. Transgender people are almost four times as likely to earn less than $10,000 than the rest of the population even though transgender people have much higher rates of college and graduate school education. Single LGBT people with children are three times more likely to be living near the poverty line than the rest of the population with children. And married or partnered LGBT parents are twice as likely to earn incomes close to the poverty line than married or partnered non-LGBT parents. Children raised my same-sex couples are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty than are children raised by married heterosexual couples.

ADVERTISEMENT

And then, of course, there’s ye ole racism, which dovetails beautifully with homophobia. So, for instance, African Americans in same-sex couples are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as African Americans in married male-female relationships.

The study lays out the three main causes of the financial disadvantages faced by LGBT people: