How Many Transgender Adults Are in America?
By: Melissa Ingle
Tags: LGBTQ, Transgender, Data Science, Statistics

How Many Transgender Adults Are in America?

Counting a Vanishingly Small Population

The transgender community has experienced a rise in cultural visibility in recent decades. While some of this attention is welcome, even necessary, to gain full acceptance into mainstream society, it has also brought resistance in certain quarters. Although 62% of Americans in 2019 reported being more supportive of transgender rights compared to five years ago, 25% reported being more opposed. For all of the gains made in public acceptance, a sizable minority remains resentful of what they see as our abrupt emergence on the national scene, mistaking our call for equal rights as a demand for special rights and our unexpected prominence as a cultural tsunami, threatening to drown out their own lifestyles and concerns. The actual data, however, tell a different story, that of a tiny minority making up around 1/2 of 1% of the total population. My own analysis, conducted this year, indicates just .54% or 1.36 million adults identify as transgender or non-binary.

The Very Brief History of Counting Gender Identity in America

Attempts to gather national data on this topic go back less than a decade. This is a field of almost startling recency. In 2011, researcher Gary J. Gates conducted one of the first known attempts to perform a rigorous analysis on this topic. Using data from just two states — California and Massachusetts — Gates generated an estimate that 0.3% of the adult US population identified as transgender or non-binary. This amounted to approximately 700,000 adults. In 2016 (using 2014 data), researchers at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimated 0.58%, or 1.39 million adults, identified as transgender or non-binary. They based this estimate on data from 19 states. It is notable that their estimate is approximately double that of the earlier one. The researchers put forth several speculative reasons to account for the difference. Perhaps greater cultural acceptance allowed people to feel more comfortable identifying as transgender, perhaps the difference was just down to more modern techniques and more complete data.

So Just How Many Transgender Adults Are There?

For my estimate, I used the latest available (2019) data from 30 states to estimate an adult transgender population of 0.54%, or roughly 1.36 million adults. This estimate is based on the most complete picture yet of the transgender population in America and should provide the highest quality estimate available. The findings are significant because they suggest the population of adults identifying as transgender has remained steady for at least the past five years. More on that later, but first a summary.

US Transgender Population by State

Estimated Adult Transgender Population by State

*Indicates states with estimated values

**New Jersey data is from 2018. NJ chose to survey participants via landline only in 2019 and did not provide a large enough sample for estimation.

Where Do We Get All This Data?

Unfortunately, there is no complete picture of the transgender population in America. No single entity, public or private, bothers to even collect data on a vital and important subsegment of its population. The closest we get is the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). The survey, conducted annually at the state level, questions over 400,000 Americans about their “health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services.” Even here, in the most comprehensive survey in America, questions of sexuality and gender identity are only asked in an optional module, the aptly named Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) module. Currently, 30 US States and the territory of Guam opt to include the SOGI module in their survey.

This lack of a complete picture requires researchers to use a variety of statistical techniques to estimate data. Briefly, both the UCLA researchers and I use what’s called a similarity matrix, although we use different algorithms to calculate our results. A similarity matrix works by looking for data with like (or similar) answers to predict missing data. Similar data is grouped and multivariate regression is then applied to generate statistical estimates. This may sound a bit like guesswork, and to a certain extent it is, but the techniques are solid and tested, and more to the point, they’re the best we have until all 50 states survey their transgender population. I used a library in the R statistical programming language called mice (multivariate imputation by chained equations). If anyone is interested, I’m happy to discuss further.

What Was Asked?

The question the CDC posed was as follows:

Do you consider yourself to be transgender? If yes, do you consider yourself to be male-to-female, female-to-male, or gender non-conforming?

The results for 30 states are shown below:

For my estimates, I used only the “Yes” answers (responses 1,2, and 3). While the “Don’t know/Not Sure” responses are intriguing, the actual intent of the respondent is not known and so they were not counted. The average transgender population of the 30 states (and several territories) surveyed adds up to .41% of total respondents (see Yes answers in Percentage column). Once statistical weights are applied, the amount is calculated to be .52% (see the Weighted Percentage column). Briefly, weighting is used in population statistics to insure demographic groups are correctly represented in sampling. The CDC includes the weights in their data so that researchers can apply them to each sampling unit.

A Stable Population

My data essentially back up and reinforce the highly respected 2016 UCLA Williams Institute study. As to the minor variations, I do have some suppositions as to what may have caused them. One possible reason is that my study collects data from 30 states compared to 19 from the earlier study. More data should give a better estimate. The next reason is that the numbers don’t really differ at all. The UCLA researchers provided a range of numbers from .36% to .95% and my estimate falls squarely within that range.

I believe the real reason comes down to the extremely low numbers being counted. As an example, in the state of Arizona, almost 9,000 people were surveyed and, of those, exactly 47 identified as transgender or non-binary, which amounts to .53% of the total. That number is extremely small by any accounting, and attempts to scale that number up to the total state population should be viewed for what they are — an estimate. Once statistical weights are applied to account for demographic distribution, it should be obvious these numbers are educated guesses at best, albeit guesses using extremely sophisticated algorithms and expensive computing equipment. This researcher took 3 months to complete her study, which required the purchase of a more powerful computer.

On a frustrating note, two of the most populous states — California and Illinois, which combined account for nearly 16% of the US adult population — do not include the SOGI module in their surveys. If those two states included this module, it would add approximately 66K respondents and invaluable clarity on the LGBT population.

Conclusion

Whatever the cause of the slight difference, the fact that two separate studies, conducted 5 years apart and in vastly different political environments, arrived at nearly the same number, suggests we are beginning to form an accurate grasp of the size and shape of the transgender community. As that community continues to merge ever so slowly into the mainstream of American society, it is vitally important that we understand its size and scope. It is clear that it’s not a wave threatening to drown out anyone, nor does it appear to be increasing in number, despite claims by certain high-profile media figures. As more states care enough about their own populations to begin to count them, an ever-clearer picture should emerge.

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