A Brief on the Transgender Population

Over the last few weeks, I have heard more and more people discussing trans identities after Trump made his series of tweets about the “burden” of transgender people in the military. Often when these discussions happen, it seems as though cisgender people forget that people who are trans are -in fact- people. Trans individuals are often framed in a strange state of hypothetical situations. Sometimes it seems as though the cisgender community has never actually considered that they may know or meet a transgender individual. From this line of thought, I began to wonder about the actual transgender population.
As of June 2016, it is estimated that about 1.4 million adults in the United States. Given that this is an estimate, it means that approximately 0.6 percent of the population may be transgender. However, that estimate is not without its faults as explained by an article by ThinkProgess that was released around the same time as the study:
“The biggest problem is that the census doesn’t ask individuals to identify their gender identity, so it provides little insight into the transgender population. The Social Security Administration can track name changes that changed gender — 21,833 as of 2010 — but that’s not an actual measurement of how many transgender people there are.
Without nationwide data collection tools, the strategy has been to use statewide studies that might ask people to identify their gender identity. Gates’ study, for example, extrapolated results from a health survey in Massachusetts and a survey about tobacco use in California.
The new study was possible because the Center for Disease Control added gender identity as an optional question to the survey that is part of its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Nineteen states opted to include the question, and statistical models then helped to estimate the results for the entire country. There still hasn’t been a nationwide mechanism for actually conducting a census of transgender people.”
Along with the above mentioned issues, many may not have self-reported their gender out of fear that they may face discrimination. This was the case in the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey where 71 percent of respondents did not disclose their gender or gender identity because of that reason. After assessing the potential faults in these numbers, it can be assumed that the population of transgender people may be greater than what was reported a bit over a year ago. It should also be noted that transgender people my be cautious to report their trans identity in government surveys due to benefits and rights for trans people being in a state of uncertainty.
To put these numbers into perspective, one may only be slightly more likely to meet an ambidextrous person than a transgender person as they make up about 1 percent of the population. Much like transgender people, one may not immediately know that an ambidextrous person has been in your presence.
