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What you should know about this indicator

  • This data comes from the LGBTI National Policy Dataset, compiled by Kristopher Velasco at Princeton University. It tracks the adoption, scope, and enforcement of 27 LGBTI-related policies across 195 countries, with annual data starting in 1991.
  • The indicator is coded as follows: Legal (marriage equality is fully implemented under national law; civil unions may also exist), Civil unions only (a national civil union or registered partnership is recognized, but same-sex marriage is not), Varies by region (marriage equality, the marriage ban, or civil unions are only partially in effect across subnational jurisdictions), No legal provisions (the law neither allows same-sex marriage or civil unions nor defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman) and Banned (the law defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and there are no civil unions).
  • A definition of marriage counts only if it is in a constitution, family code or marriage law that applies to everyone. In countries where each religious community has its own marriage law, such as Kuwait, Morocco or Qatar, and not every one of those laws defines the spouses' sexes, marriage is classified as No legal provisions.
  • The dataset counts policies established by binding legal instruments — statutes, constitutional provisions, decrees and regulations with the force of law, and binding court rulings. Where no law governs a policy, a written rule that does can count too, such as a health-authority guideline, a blood service's donor questionnaire or a religious ruling. Bills, ministerial statements and non-binding declarations are not counted.
Marriage for same-sex partners
Velasco
Whether same-sex couples can legally marry, whether civil unions or registered partnerships are recognized instead, or whether same-sex marriage is banned.
Source
Velasco (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 15, 2026
Next expected update
July 2027
Date range
1991–2025

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Velasco – LGBTI National Policy Dataset

The LGBTI National Policy Dataset (Version 3.0) is a country-year-policy panel tracking the adoption, scope, and enforcement of LGBTI-related policies across 195 countries from 1991 to 2025. The dataset is distributed in long format: each row records one country in one year for one specific policy-status combination, with the share of the population covered, the adoption and implementation years, the policy's descriptors (penalty, fine, sexes covered, scope, enforcement), up to twelve source citations and a confidence rating. It is designed for use in comparative political research, policy diffusion analysis, and quantitative cross-national studies of LGBTI rights.

The dataset covers 27 distinct policy areas organized into 54 policy-status combinations (each policy paired with two mutually exclusive status directions). Of these 54 combinations, 36 contain substantive data; the remaining 18 are structural placeholders with all-zero values, included to maintain a fully balanced panel suitable for econometric methods.

Retrieved on
October 19, 2026
Retrieved from
https://osf.io/wta9p/overview
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Velasco, Kristopher. 2026. "LGBTI National Policy Dataset, Version 3.0." https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WTA9P.

The LGBTI National Policy Dataset (Version 3.0) is a country-year-policy panel tracking the adoption, scope, and enforcement of LGBTI-related policies across 195 countries from 1991 to 2025. The dataset is distributed in long format: each row records one country in one year for one specific policy-status combination, with the share of the population covered, the adoption and implementation years, the policy's descriptors (penalty, fine, sexes covered, scope, enforcement), up to twelve source citations and a confidence rating. It is designed for use in comparative political research, policy diffusion analysis, and quantitative cross-national studies of LGBTI rights.

The dataset covers 27 distinct policy areas organized into 54 policy-status combinations (each policy paired with two mutually exclusive status directions). Of these 54 combinations, 36 contain substantive data; the remaining 18 are structural placeholders with all-zero values, included to maintain a fully balanced panel suitable for econometric methods.

Retrieved on
October 19, 2026
Retrieved from
https://osf.io/wta9p/overview
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Velasco, Kristopher. 2026. "LGBTI National Policy Dataset, Version 3.0." https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WTA9P.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

From the original dataset, we combined three indicators — marriage equality (legal direction), marriage equality (illegal direction, i.e. a law that defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman), and civil unions — into a single categorical indicator (Legal, Civil unions only, Varies by region, No legal provisions, Banned) based on the proportion scores of all three. Country-years where marriage equality, the ban, or civil unions are only partially in effect across subnational jurisdictions are classified as "Varies by region"; country-years where a national civil union or registered partnership is recognized but same-sex marriage is not are classified as "Civil unions only".

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Marriage for same-sex partners”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2023) - “LGBT+ Rights”. Data adapted from Velasco. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/marriage-for-same-sex-partners-velasco.html [online resource] (archived on November 2, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Velasco (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Velasco (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Marriage for same-sex partners – Velasco” [dataset]. Velasco, “LGBTI National Policy Dataset 3.0” [original data]. Retrieved November 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/marriage-for-same-sex-partners-velasco.html (archived on November 2, 2026).

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