The number of young people who identify as transgender has almost doubled in recent years, according to a new report that shows a marked generational change and an emerging social embrace of a diversity of gender identities.
The analysis, based on government health surveys conducted between 2017 and 2020, estimated that 1.4% of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3% of 18- to 24-year-olds they were transgender, compared with approximately 0.5% of all adults. .
These figures illustrated a significant increase since the researchers ’previous report in 2017, although the analyzes used different methods.
Experts said young people have more and more language and social acceptance to explore their gender identities, while older people may feel more limited. But the numbers, which vary widely from state to state, also raise questions about the role of peer influence or the political climate of the community.
“It’s appropriate for development that teens explore every facet of their identity, that’s what teens do,” said Dr. Angela Goepferd, medical director of the Minnesota Children’s Hospital’s Gender Health Program. who did not participate in the new analysis. “And, generationally, gender has become a part of someone’s identity that is more socially acceptable to explore.”
The notion of living as a transgender person is also changing. Dr. Goepferd, who is not binary, noted that many teens would not necessarily want or need hormones or surgeries to switch to another gender, as was typical of older generations.
Surveys, created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not ask younger teens about non-binary or other gender identities, which have also been on the rise in recent years. But nearly a quarter of adults in surveys who said they were transgender identified themselves as “non-gendered.”
“We, as a culture, just have to rely on the fact that there is gender diversity among us,” Dr. Goepferd said. “And that doesn’t mean we have to treat it medically in all cases, but as a society we have to make room for it.”
Although the estimated total number of transgender people was small (about 1.6 million people 13 years of age or older, or about 0.6 percent of the population), trans identification in recent years has turned into political dynamite, driven in part by the rise of minors seeking medical treatment. Republican lawmakers across the country have tried to ban this care by criminalizing doctors or investigating parents for abuse, which professional medical groups have condemned.
The new data was analyzed by researchers at the Williams Institute, a research center at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law that produces highly prestigious reports on the demographics, behaviors, and political concerns of LGBTQ populations. to the United States.
The study found that people aged 13 to 25 accounted for a disproportionate proportion of the transgender population. While younger teens made up only 7.6 percent of the total U.S. population, they accounted for about 18 percent of transgender people. Likewise, young people between the ages of 18 and 24 accounted for 11 percent of the total population but 24 percent of the transgender population.
Older adults had a disproportionately small proportion: although 62% of the total population, only 47% of transgender people were between 25 and 64 years old. And while 20% of Americans are over the age of 65, this age group only accounts for 10% of the total number of people. transgender people across the country.
The Williams Institute used data from two national sources: the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Monitoring System, which is administered to adults across the country, and its Higher Risk Behavior Survey, conducted in high schools. The surveys, which were conducted by telephone or in person, included demographics, as well as a variety of medical and behavioral information, such as smoking habits, HIV status, nutrition, and exercise.
Starting in 2017, the high school survey included an optional question asking if the student was transgender. From 2017 to 2020, 15 states included this question in their high school surveys, while 41 states included the adult question at least once in that time period.
The Williams Institute used this data, along with statistical modeling of demographic and geographic variables, to arrive at its estimates of the transgender population across the country.
“It’s important to know that trans people live everywhere in the United States, and trans people are part of communities across the country,” said Jody Herman, a senior public policy researcher at the Williams Institute and lead author of the report. . “We use the best data available, but we need more and better data all the time.”
The U.S. Census Bureau began asking questions about sexual orientation and gender identity only last year, as part of a new data collection effort. And even national suicide statistics, important in the study of this vulnerable population, have no information about sexuality or gender identity.
“No one knows how many trans people or how many gay or bisexual people committed suicide last year,” said Amit Paley, head of The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group that recently released its own report. based on social data. media polls show that LGBTQ youth had high rates of mental health problems and suicidal thoughts.
“These data do not exist because the government does not collect them in the death records,” said Mr. Paley. “It’s something we’re working on trying to change.”
When their previous report was published in 2017, researchers at the Williams Institute did not have actual survey data for younger adolescents, but used statistical models to extrapolate them based on adult data. At the time, there were an estimated 150,000 transgender teens in the country, or about 0.7 percent of teens.
With the inclusion of new high school survey data added in 2017, that estimate has doubled to 300,000.
It is unclear whether this jump reflects inaccuracies in the previous estimate, a real increase in the number of transgender teens, or both.
“That’s the puzzling question of why all this is happening,” said Dr. Herman.
The racial composition of transgender adults and transgender adolescents was approximately the same. About half of the two groups were white, slightly less than the relative number of white people in the general population, and a disproportionately large number from each group identified as Latinos.
The data also show the distribution of trans people by state. New York has the highest estimated population of transgender teens, at 3 percent, while Wyoming has the lowest, at 0.6 percent. Transgender adults showed a lower range, with 0.9 percent of adults identified as transgender in North Carolina and 0.2 percent in Missouri.
The drive to restrict the rights of transgender youth
Card 1 of 8
A growing trend. Measures that could transform the lives of young transgender people are at the heart of a heated political debate across America. The following is how some states are addressing the issue:
Utah. A day after the decision in Indiana, Gov. Spencer Cox, also a Republican, vetoed a similar bill that would have banned young transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports. Republican lawmakers later voted to overturn the veto and enact the legislation.
Other states. Since 2019, lawmakers have introduced bills that seek to ban transgender youth from joining school sports teams based on their gender identities. They have become law in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.
Adolescent figures were based on surveys collected in 15 states: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Researchers then used this survey data to create a model of how individual and state characteristics affect the likelihood of being transgender. Using this model, along with census data, they made estimates for the other 35 states and Washington, DC.
Experts working with transgender teens agreed that certain social factors would play an indisputable role in their identities, as they did decades ago when gay and lesbian people first came out in large numbers for the first time.
“It means a new confidence among a new generation to be authentic in their gender identity,” said Phillip Hammack, a professor of psychology and director of the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Laboratory for Sexual and Gender Diversity. “I think we saw something very similar, maybe we didn’t have the exact figures to back it up, because in the 1990s we saw more visibility on self-labeling as gay, lesbian and bisexual.”
Recent data from Gallup surveys also analyzed by the Williams Institute show that young adults also account for a disproportionately large share of the total LGBTQ population in the United States, which varies similarly from state to state.
Social media has been a major catalyst for teens questioning their gender identity today.
“I think a lot of it is definitely the Internet,” said Indigo Giles, a 20-year-old college student in Austin who has protested Texas state abuse investigations into parents of transgender children.
Mx. Giles said they realized they were non-binary after finding a community of like-minded people on Tumblr. “People who may have had these feelings for a long time, but haven’t had the words to say them, can finally see, in such an easily accessible way, others who feel the same way,” they said.
Conversely, it can be much more difficult for older people to explore their gender identities later.
Dr. Hammack described a person he interviewed who talked about …