How many lgbt in us

Increase in acceptance of homosexuality in the United States between and Hate crime Cases of assault on gay or lesbian people in the U. Same-sex marriage Millennials in the U. Worldwide Highest acceptance of homosexuality.

Interesting statistics In the following 5 chapters, you will quickly find the 25 most important statistics relating to "Homosexuality in the United States". Statistics on the topic. Global overview Number of countries that criminalize homosexuality Americans who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender Survey on the legalization of same-sex marriages in the U.

Support for same-sex marriage in the United States , by political party. Percentage of same-sex couple households in the U. Distribution of characters on prime TV in the U. More interesting topics Related topics. Laws that explicitly mention sexual orientation primarily protect or harm lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. That said, transgender people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual can be affected by laws that explicitly mention sexual orientation.

Gender identity and expression are independent of sexual orientation, and transgender people may identify as heterosexual, lesbian, gay or bisexual. These laws also can apply to people who are not transgender, but whose sense of gender or manner of dress does not adhere to gender stereotypes. We appreciate you signing up for the MAP newsletter.

You will receive an automatic email confirmation shortly. LGBT Populations. That is up from 4. Between and , 3. Currently, The latest results are based on more than 15, interviews conducted throughout with Americans aged 18 and older. Gallup had previously reported annual updates from its daily tracking survey data, but did not routinely measure LGBT identification in or The identity question asked in offers a greater level of detail than the question asked in previous years.

Now, respondents have the ability to more precisely indicate aspects of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In addition to being able to identify whether they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or straight, respondents may also specifically identify whether they are transgender. Different approaches to measuring LGBT status can produce varying estimates of its incidence in the U. Results from Gallup's new question do appear comparable to those from its prior question.

The 1. The LGBT percentage rose an average of 0. We revisited Web sites for recurring surveys to check for new data until November 9, Across both searches, we excluded satisfaction surveys, surveys that were not based on self-report e. We further excluded surveys that did not specifically report transgender identities e. We completed an investigator-developed data extraction form for each eligible survey with data on survey year, population, sampling design, question s used to assess transgender identity, and the total sample size and number who self-reported as transgender.

The first author extracted and double-checked all data. We conducted random-effects meta-analyses based on the proportion of transgender individuals. Pooling of multiple survey samples, including multiple waves for recurring surveys, has been used before to estimate population size in gender and sexual minorities.

This statistic indicates whether variation is more likely attributable to study heterogeneity or to chance. We used meta-regression to assess our hypothesis regarding a trend in estimated population size over time. We used the Knapp—Hartung method to control type-I error in meta-regressions. We initially identified 65 surveys. After we excluded duplicates and surveys that did not meet our eligibility criteria, 5 surveys remained for analysis, spanning to Figure 1.

Accounting for data from multiple waves of recurring surveys 4 out of 5 , our final analysis included 20 samples. Table 1 describes each of these samples in more detail.

Questions used to collect data on transgender identity varied greatly. The estimated proportion of transgender individuals based on surveys that categorized transgender as gender identity was 0. Leave-one-out analysis of these surveys showed a marked effect on the population estimate when the NCHA was left out 0. Figure 2 shows a forest plot with the individual survey contributions. To assess the effect of including recurring surveys, we reanalyzed the data while including only the latest wave and leaving out the NCHA as a potential outlier.

The estimated proportion of transgender individuals when we used this reduced data set spanning to was 0. These respondents were not included in our population-size estimates. To test the hypothesis for changes over time, we conducted a meta-regression with the estimated proportion of transgender individuals as a dependent variable for surveys that categorized transgender as gender identity, but leaving out the NCHA as a potential outlier.

A meta-regression model that included the year of the survey as predictor, centered with respect to , explained Figure 3 visualizes the results of this meta-regression. The NCHA was omitted as a potential outlier. Data points are scaled, with larger circles indicating smaller standard errors.

The estimated proportion of transgender individuals based on surveys that categorized transgender as sexual orientation was 0. It should be noted that presenting transgender in the context of sexual orientation does not reflect our current understanding of what it means to be transgender.

We include these data for comparison only and doing so should not be taken as validation that presenting transgender as a sexual orientation is in any way appropriate. Leave-one-out analysis showed no disproportionate effect of single surveys.

A direct comparison of estimates showed that the proportion for transgender categorized as sexual orientation was significantly lower than the overall proportion for transgender categorized as gender identity 0.

Our meta-regression of US population-based surveys indicated a substantial annual increase in the number of transgender adults in the United States. As a consequence, meta-analyses that pool data across several years, including our own, will likely underestimate their numbers.

A conservative estimate extrapolating our meta-regression results, while excluding the latest NCHA wave of data as a potential outlier, suggests that the proportion of transgender adults in the United States is 0. It should be noted that this estimate may be more indicative for younger adults and that national surveys in the near future may observe higher numbers of transgender people.

We speculate that the observed annual increase is not an increase of the true population size, but the result of people feeling freer to report that they are or identify as transgender. This may result from societal changes, such as increased public visibility, awareness, and acceptance of transgender individuals. Comparison of our population-size estimate with international numbers is not straightforward because, even within a single country, differences in social acceptance affect the number of individuals who are willing to self-report a transgender identity.

Our estimate of 0. Other surveys that were not included in our analysis because they specifically recruited LGBT individuals also indicated a sizable proportion of respondents who endorsed other gender options.

The available evidence suggests that the size of the gender-nonconforming or gender-variant population may be twice as large as our best estimate for the transgender population size. According to our analysis, surveys that considered transgender a sexual orientation resulted in at least a 4-fold underestimate of the number of transgender individuals.

This underestimate should not come as a surprise, because transgender as sexual orientation does not reflect current understanding of transgender as gender identity. This practice misrepresents the number of transgender people in the United States and sustains misconceptions about what it means to be transgender.

Of note, as of , the NHIS no longer lists transgender as an option under sexual orientation. Several considerations should be made when one is interpreting the results of our study. First, transgender people differ greatly and not all transgender individuals desire or have the resources to seek surgeries, hormone therapy, or change their name or sex designation on legal documents. Second, only about a quarter of the included surveys reported on the general population. More than half of the surveys on which our population-size estimate was based reported on younger adults college and university students , and research has shown that individuals aged 18 to 24 years are more likely to identify as transgender.

Both aspects may lead to higher population size estimates and may not generalize to US adults as a whole. Third, evidence from surveys that asked about sex assigned at birth suggested that the number of adults whose sex assigned at birth differs from their current gender identity could be as large as our current estimate of the transgender population size. Also, survey errors with respect to data recording, although they are expected to be small, may have affected our estimate, especially because the base rate of the transgender population is small.

Lastly, our analysis indicated significant amounts of residual heterogeneity, which can potentially be explained by differences in respondent characteristics e. The small number of surveys in our analysis did not allow for testing more than 1 model predictor. We aimed to estimate the current transgender population size in the United States.