Yglesias explains what today’s DOMA ruling means for the budget:
This is obviously not the main issue driving anyone’s thinking about marriage equality, but throwing out the Defense of Marriage Act as the Supreme Court did today should have some meaningful implications for the federal budget. The research that exists on this is a little sketchy and uncertain, but the main conclusion is that it will likely have a small positive impact on deficits. The ur-text here is a 2004 Congressional Budget Office analysis that was done at the behest of Ohio Republican Steve Chabot, who I think was hoping for the opposite conclusion.
Neil Irwin goes into more detail:
On the spending side, one of the biggest impacts is on Social Security and other federal programs. As the 2004 CBO report notes, “As a general rule, married people fare better under Social Security than single people do, and married couples with one earner fare better than two-earner couples do.” At the simplest level, more married couples means a more generous Social Security system, due to survivor benefits that allow a widow or widower to continue receiving benefits after their spouse dies. The CBO reckoned those numbers would be relatively modest, however, because gay couples are more likely to both be wage earners than straight couples, and because they are the same gender, it is less likely that one will dramatically outlive the other. The CBO estimated the increased federal spending due to same-sex marriage at about $200 million a year from 2010 to 2014, a pittance in the context of the federal budget.
State-level analyses have fit the same pattern. As Suzy Khimm notes here, studies in Maine and Rhode Island both pointed to small but measurable improvements to those states’ fiscal pictures from the legalization of gay marriage.
The Dish 