Gallup’s newest replace on lesbian, homosexual, bisexual or transgender identification finds 5.6% of U.S. adults, estimated to be as much as 18 million, figuring out as LGBT.
The present estimate is up from 4.5% in Gallup’s earlier replace based mostly on 2017 knowledge.
In 2020, 5.6% of U.S. adults recognized as LGBT. That’s up from 4.5% in 2017, the final yr it was requested, and 4.1% in 2016. Between 2012 and 2015, 3.5% to three.9% of U.S. adults recognized as LGBT.
At the moment, 86.7% of Individuals say they’re heterosexual or straight, and seven.6% don’t reply the query about their sexual orientation. Gallup’s 2012-2017 knowledge had roughly 5% “no opinion” responses.
The most recent outcomes are based mostly on greater than 15,000 interviews carried out all through 2020 with Individuals aged 18 and older. Gallup had beforehand reported annual updates from its 2012-2017 every day monitoring survey knowledge however didn’t routinely measure LGBT identification in 2018 or 2019.
The id query requested in 2020 provides a higher degree of element than the query requested in earlier years.
Now, respondents point out their exact sexual orientation, moderately than merely answering “sure” or “no” to whether or not they establish as lesbian, homosexual, bisexual or transgender.
Totally different approaches to measuring LGBT standing can produce various estimates of its incidence within the U.S. inhabitants.
Outcomes from Gallup’s new query seems corresponding to these from its prior query.
The 1.1-percentage-point enhance within the 2020 estimate (utilizing the brand new query) in contrast with the 2017 estimate (utilizing the previous query) is about what would have been predicted from the latest developments. The LGBT share rose a median of 0.3 factors per yr in 2016 and 2017. Assuming that development continued prior to now three years, the full enhance would have been about one share level.
Greater than half of LGBT adults (54.6%) establish as bisexual. A couple of quarter (24.5%) say they’re homosexual, with 11.7% figuring out as lesbian and 11.3% as transgender.
A further 3.3% volunteer one other non-heterosexual choice or time period to explain their sexual orientation, reminiscent of queer or same-gender-loving. Respondents can provide a number of responses when describing their sexual id; thus, the totals exceed 100%.
Rebasing these percentages to symbolize their share of the U.S. grownup inhabitants finds 3.1% of Individuals figuring out as bisexual, 1.4% as homosexual, 0.7% as lesbian and 0.6% as transgender.
One of many predominant causes LGBT identification has been growing over time is that youthful generations are way more more likely to take into account themselves to be one thing apart from heterosexual. This consists of about one in six grownup Technology Z members (these aged 18 to 23 in 2020).
LGBT identification is decrease in every older technology, together with 2% or much less Individuals born earlier than 1965 (aged 56 and older in 2020).
The overwhelming majority of Technology Z adults who establish as LGBT — 72% — say they’re bisexual. Thus, 11.5% of all Gen Z adults within the U.S. say they’re bisexual, with about 2% figuring out as homosexual, lesbian or transgender.
About half of millennials (these aged 24 to 39 in 2020) who establish as LGBT say they’re bisexual. In older age teams, expressed bisexual choice just isn’t considerably extra widespread than expressed homosexual or lesbian choice.
