Report Reveals Sharp Rise in Transgender Young People in the U.S.

The number of adolescents identified as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report that captures the significant alternation of generations and new social acceptance of gender identity diversity.

An analysis based on a government health survey conducted from 2017 to 2020 estimated that 1.4% of ages 13-17 and 1.3% of ages 18-24 were transgender, but about 0.5 for all adults. %was. ..

These numbers are for researchers Previous report In 2017, different methods were used in the analysis.

According to experts, young people are becoming more and more linguistic and socially receptive to the search for gender identity, while older people may be more constrained. But the numbers, which vary widely from state to state, also cast doubt on the role of peer influence and the political situation in the community.

“It’s developmentally appropriate for teenagers to explore all aspects of their identity-that’s what teenagers do,” said the Medical Director of the Gender Health Program at Children’s Minnesota Hospital, who wasn’t involved in the new analysis. One Dr. Angelagepferd said. “And across generations, gender has become part of someone’s socially acceptable identity to explore.”

The notion of what it means to live as a transgender person is also changing. Dr. Goepferd, a non-binary, said many teens do not necessarily want or need to move hormones or surgery to another gender, as is typical of older generations. I did.

A study produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not ask young teens about the increasing number of non-binary or other gender identities in recent years. However, nearly a quarter of adults who answered that they were transgender in the survey were identified as “gender incompatible.”

“As a culture, we need to be devoted to the fact that there is gender diversity among us,” said Dr. Goepferd. “And that doesn’t mean we need to treat it medically in all cases, but it does mean that as a society we need to make space for it.”

The estimated total number of transgenders is small, about 1.6 million people over the age of 13, or about 0.6% of the population, but the identification of transgender in recent years is partly due to the increasing number of minors seeking treatment in politics. It has become a target dynamite. Republicans across the country Criminalization Doctor or investigating Abused parents accused by a specialized medical group.

The new data was analyzed by researchers at the Williams Institute, a research center at the University of California Law School in Los Angeles. The Institute produces highly regarded reports on demographics, behavioral and policy concerns of the US LGBTQ population.

The study found that 13-25 people accounted for a large proportion of the disproportionate proportion of the transgender population. Young teens accounted for only 7.6% of the total population of the United States, but about 18% of transgender people. Similarly, ages 18-24 made up 11% of the total population, while they made up 24% of the transgender population.

The proportion of older people is disproportionately small. Although 62% of the total population, only 47% of transgender people were 25-64 years old. Twenty percent of Americans are over 65, but that age group is only 10% of the total population. Transgender people across the country.

The Williams Institute used data from two national sources: the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Monitoring System conducted on adults across the country and its Youth Risk Behavioral Survey conducted in high school. Surveys conducted either by phone or directly collect data on demographics, as well as a variety of medical and behavioral information such as smoking habits, HIV status, nutrition and exercise.

Since 2017, high school surveys have included optional questions asking if students are transgender. From 2017 to 2020, 15 states included this question in their high school survey, and 41 states included adult questions at least once during that period.

The Williams Institute used this data along with statistical modeling of demographic and geographic variables to reach estimates of the transgender population across the country.

“It’s important to know that transgender people live everywhere in the United States, and that transgender people are part of communities across the country,” said a senior public policy scholar at the Williams Institute. Said lead author Jody Harman. Of the report. “We are using the best data available, but we always need more and better data.”

The US Census Bureau Only last year I started asking about sexual orientation and gender identity as part of a new data collection effort. And even national suicide statistics, which are important in the study of this vulnerable population, do not have information on sexuality or gender identity.

“No one knows that the number of transgender people, gay and bisexual people died from suicide last year,” said the head of the recently released suicide prevention group Trevor Project. One Amit Paley says. Own report Social media polls show that young LGBTQ people have a high rate of mental health problems and suicidal ideation.

“The data doesn’t exist because it wasn’t collected by the government in the death record,” Paley said. “That’s what we’re trying to change.”

When the last report was published in 2017, Williams Institute researchers did not have actual survey data on young teens. Instead, we used statistical modeling to make estimates based on adult data. At that time, they estimated 150,000 transgender teens in the country, or about 0.7 percent of teens.

Including the new high school survey data added in 2017, the estimate doubled to 300,000.

It is not clear whether the jump reflects the inaccuracy of previous estimates, a true increase in the number of transgender adolescents, or both.

“It’s a embarrassing question as to why this is all happening,” Dr. Harman said.

The racial makeup of transgender adults and transgender teens was about the same. Approximately half of both groups were Caucasian, slightly less than the relative number of Caucasians in the general population, and the numbers in each group were disproportionately high and identified as Latino.

The data also show the distribution of transgender by state. New York has an estimated transgender teenage population of up to 3%, while Wyoming has a minimum of 0.6%. Transgender adults showed a narrower range, with 0.9% of adults identified as transgender in North Carolina and 0.2% in Missouri.

Adolescent numbers are 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. The researchers then used the survey data to create a model of how conditions and individual characteristics affect the probability of being transgender. The model was used with census demographic data to make estimates for the other 35 states and Washington, DC.

Experts working with transgender teenagers agree that certain social factors undoubtedly play a role in their identities, as they did decades ago when gay and lesbian people first appeared in large numbers. Did.

Philip Hammac, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and director of the Institute for Sexual Diversity, said: “I think we saw something very similar because we saw more visibility in the 90’s by labeling ourselves as gay, lesbian and bisexual.

Recently Gallup polling data Young adults also make up a disproportionately large proportion of the total LGBTQ population in the United States, as analyzed by the Williams Institute, which varies from state to state as well.

Social media is an important catalyst for teens who question gender identity today.

“I think most of it is definitely the Internet,” said Indigo Giles, a 20-year-old college student in Austin who protested the Texas abuse investigation into the parents of transgender children.

Mx. Giles said after finding a community of like-minded people on Tumblr, he noticed that they were non-binary. “People who may have had these feelings for a long time, but couldn’t give them words, will eventually find other people who feel the same in such an easily accessible way. You can see it, “they said.

And conversely, it may be much more difficult for older people to explore their gender identity in later years.

Dr. Hammac talked about the person he interviewed about how difficult it is to come out as non-binary in his fifties because “we look around and everyone is very young.” And others who identified him as masculine or butch lesbians told him, “If I were so young, I would probably have been on that path, but it wasn’t available.”

Dr. Goepferd of the Minnesota Children’s Hospital pointed out another possible reason for the low proportion of older transgender people. HIVViolence and suicide, transgender people more probably To die at a young age.

“The harsh reality is that we don’t have transgender because they didn’t survive,” they said.