{"id":69715,"date":"2017-01-16T08:07:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69715"},"modified":"2017-01-23T12:37:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T17:37:51","slug":"shifts-in-the-us-lgbt-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/01\/16\/shifts-in-the-us-lgbt-population\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifts in the U.S. LGBT Population"},"content":{"rendered":"

Counting the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people is harder than you might think.\u00a0 I’ve written before<\/a> on just how important it is to consider, for instance, precisely how<\/em> we ask questions about sexuality.\u00a0 One way scholars have gotten around this is to analytically separate the distinct dimensions of sexuality to consider which dimension they are asking about.\u00a0 For research on sexuality, this is typically done by considering sexual identities as analytically distinct from sexual desires and sexual behaviors.\u00a0 We like to imagine that sexual identities, acts, and desires all neatly match up, but the truth of the matter is… they don’t.\u00a0 At least not for everyone.\u00a0 And while you might think that gender might lend itself to be more easily assessed on surveys, recent research<\/a> shows that traditional measures of sex and gender erase our ability to see key ways that gender varies in our society.<\/p>\n

Gallup just released a new publication<\/a> authored by Gary J. Gates<\/a>.\u00a0 Gates has written extensively on gender and sexual demography and is responsible for many of the population estimates we have for gender and sexual minorities in the U.S.\u00a0 This recent publication just examines shifts in the past 5 years (between 2012 and 2016).\u00a0 And many of them may appear to be small.\u00a0 But changes like this at the level of a population in a population larger than 300,000,000 people are big<\/em> shifts, involving huge numbers of actual people.\u00a0 In this post, I’ve graphed a couple of the findings from the report–mostly because I like to chart changes to visually illustrate findings like this to students.\u00a0 [*Small note: be aware of the truncated y axes on the graphs.\u00a0 They’re sometimes used to exaggerate findings.\u00a0 I’m here truncating the y axes to help illustrate each of the shifts discussed below.]<\/p>\n

\"lgbt-demo-1\"<\/p>\n

The report focuses only on one specific measure of membership as LGBT–identity<\/em>.\u00a0 And this is significant as past work has shown that this is, considered alongside other measures, perhaps the most conservative measure we have.\u00a0 Yet, even by that measure, the LGBT population is on the move, increasing in numbers at a rapid pace in a relatively short period of time.\u00a0 As you can see above, between 2012 and 2016, LGBT identifying persons went from 3.5%-4.1% of the U.S. population, which amounts to an estimated shift from 8.3 million people in 2012 to more than 10 million in 2016.<\/p>\n

\"lgbt-demo-2-generations\"<\/p>\n

The report also shows that a great deal of that increase can be accounted for by one particular birth cohort–Millennials.\u00a0 Perhaps not surprisingly, generations have become progressively more likely to identify as LGBT.\u00a0 But the gap between Millenials and the rest is big and appears to be growing.\u00a0 But the shifts are not only about cohort effects<\/a>.\u00a0 The report also shows that this demographic shift is gendered, racialized, and has more than a little to do with religion as well.<\/p>\n

The gender gap between proportion of the population identifying as LGBT in the U.S. is growing.\u00a0 The proportion of women identifying as LGBT has jumped almost a full percentage point over this period of time.\u00a0 And while more men (and a larger share of men) are identifying as LGBT than were in 2012, the rate of increase appears to be much slower.\u00a0 As Gates notes, “These changes mean that the portion of women among LGBT-identified adults rose slightly from 52% to 55%” (here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"lgbt-demo-3-gender-and-race\"<\/p>\n

The gap between different racial groups identifying as LGBT has also shifted with non-Hispanic Whites still among the smallest proportion of those identifying.\u00a0 As you can see, the shift has been most pronounced among Asian and Hispanic adults in the U.S.\u00a0 Because White is the largest racial demographic group here, in actual numbers, they still comprise the largest portion of the LGBT community when broken down by race.\u00a0 But, the transitions over these 5 years are a big deal.\u00a0 In 2012, 2 of every 3 LGBT adults in the U.S. identified as non-Hispanic White.\u00a0 By 2016, that proportion dropped to 6 out of every 10. This is big news.\u00a0 LGBT people (as measured by self-identification) are becoming a more racially diverse group.<\/p>\n

They are also diverse in terms of class.\u00a0 Considering shifts in the proportion of LGBT identifying individuals by income and education tells an interesting story.\u00a0 As income increases, the proportion of LGBT people decreases.\u00a0 And you can see that finding by education in 2012 as well–those with less education are more likely to be among those identifying as LGBT (roughly).\u00a0 But, by 2016, the distinctions between education groups in terms of identifying as LGBT have largely disappeared.\u00a0 The biggest rise has been among those with a college degree.\u00a0 That’s big news and could mean that, in future years, the income gap here may decrease as well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There were also findings in the report to do with religion and religiosity among LGBT identifying people in the U.S.\u00a0 But I didn’t find those as interesting.\u00a0 Almost all of the increases in people identifying as LGBT in recent years have been among those who identify as “not religious.”\u00a0 While those with moderate and high levels of religious commitment haven’t seen any changes in the last five years.\u00a0 But, among the non-religious, the proportion identifying as LGBT has jumped almost 2 percentage points (from 5.3% in 2012 to 7.0% in 2016).<\/p>\n

All of this is big news because it’s a powerful collection of data that illustrate that the gender and sexual demographics of the U.S. are, quite literally, on the move.\u00a0 We should stand up and pay attention.\u00a0 And, as Gates notes in the report, “These demographic traits are of interest to a wide range of constituencies.”\u00a0 Incredible change in an incredibly short period of time.\u00a0 Let the gender and sexual revolution continue!<\/p>\n

Edit (1\/17\/17): <\/strong>The graph charting shifts by age cohort may exaggerate (or undersell) shifts among Millennials because the data does not exclude Millennials born after 1994.\u00a0 So, some of those included in the later years here wouldn’t have been included in the earlier years because they weren’t yet 18.\u00a0 So, it’s more difficult to tell how much of that shift is actually people changing identity for the age cohort as a whole as opposed to change among the youngest Millennials surveyed.<\/p>\nTristan Bridges, PhD<\/a> is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the co-editor of<\/i> Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Inequality, and Change<\/a> with C.J. Pascoe and studies gender and sexual identity and inequality. You can follow him on Twitter here<\/a>. Tristan also blogs regularly at Inequality by (Interior) Design<\/a>.<\/i><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Counting the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people is harder than you might think.\u00a0 I’ve written before on just how important it is to consider, for instance, precisely how we ask questions about sexuality.\u00a0 One way scholars have gotten around this is to analytically separate the distinct dimensions of sexuality to consider which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":69716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/01\/LGBT-demo-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69715"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69756,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69715\/revisions\/69756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}