People in unmarried partnerships are much less likely to have health insurance than married couples, and the effect is greater for heterosexual cohabitants than it is for homosexual ones, according to a recent study.

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"People in gay couples are about twice as likely to be uninsured and people in opposite-sex couples are three times as likely to be uninsured [compared with] married people," said M.V. Lee Badgett, research director of the University of California, Los Angeles's Williams Institute, a think tank that researches sexual-orientation law and public policy.

Twenty percent of the people in same-sex couples are uninsured, compared with only 10% of married people and 15% of the overall population, according to the institute's study, which analyzed data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and was published in October's issue of the journal "Contemporary Economic Policy."

Unmarried heterosexuals with partners fared even worse, with almost a third uninsured, the study found. More than three million heterosexual couples and 300,000 gay couples potentially lack health insurance, Ms. Badgett said.

About half of major corporations offer domestic-partner benefits. The number of employers offering them has grown steadily over the past five years, with the gap between same-sex and opposite-sex couples nearly closing, according to a survey from the Society of Human Resource Management.

Still, the majority of all employers don't offer domestic-partner benefits, and even among those that do, some people may not feel comfortable taking advantage of them. They may not want to identify themselves as being in a nontraditional relationship for fear of social disapproval or negative consequences on the job.

Wall Street Journal