How Many Trans People in the US? Facts & Estimates

“How many trans people in the US?” is a question that comes up often in news coverage, policy debates, and casual conversation, and the numbers quoted can sound very different depending on the source. The most widely cited estimate comes from a 2022 study: about 1.6 million people ages 13 and older in the United States identify as transgender.

That headline number deserves context. Different surveys produce different figures, and researchers are open about why. This article lays out what the main estimates say, where they come from, and why counting this population is genuinely difficult, so you can understand the numbers rather than just repeat them.

The Headline Numbers

The best-known estimate comes from the Williams Institute, a research center at the UCLA School of Law that studies sexual orientation and gender identity demographics. Its June 2022 report estimated:

About 1.6 million people ages 13+ in the US identify as transgender, roughly 0.6% of that age group.
About 1.3 million adults (ages 18+) identify as transgender, roughly 0.5% of US adults.
About 300,000 youth (ages 13-17) identify as transgender, roughly 1.4% of that age group.
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Note the pattern: the estimated share is higher among teenagers than among adults. Researchers attribute this partly to younger people being more likely to identify openly, and partly to generational differences in how people understand and describe their gender. The report’s authors, Jody Herman, Andrew Flores, and Kathryn O’Neill, combined data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey to produce these figures.

Other Estimates and Why They Differ

The Williams Institute figure is the most cited, but it is not the only one, and the differences are instructive:

US Census Bureau, Household Pulse Survey. Starting in 2021, the Census Bureau began asking about gender identity in this experimental survey. Its estimates have generally put the transgender share of US adults at around 0.6%, in the same ballpark as the Williams Institute’s adult figure.
Gallup polling. Gallup’s surveys on LGBT identification have found that a smaller share of US adults, a fraction of one percent, specifically identify as transgender, though Gallup’s question wording and methodology differ from the surveys above.
Earlier Williams Institute estimates. A 2016 Williams report estimated about 1.4 million transgender adults. The 2022 update revised the adult figure slightly downward to 1.3 million while adding the youth estimate, showing how better data changes the picture.

These are not contradictions so much as different measurements. Survey wording matters enormously: asking “do you consider yourself transgender?” gets different answers than a two-step question about sex assigned at birth and current gender identity. The population surveyed matters too: adults only, versus ages 13 and up, versus all ages. And the year matters, because both identification patterns and survey methods change over time. For broader background, the overview of transgender population demographics collects how different countries and studies have measured this.

What “Identify as Transgender” Means in These Surveys

It helps to know what the surveys are actually counting. Most modern surveys use a two-step approach: they ask respondents what sex they were assigned at birth, and then ask about their current gender identity. People whose answers to those two questions differ are counted as transgender. Depending on the exact wording, this group generally includes transgender men, transgender women, and some nonbinary people.

Researchers are upfront that these categories are imperfect. Some people whose gender differs from their sex assigned at birth do not use the word “transgender” for themselves and may answer “no” to a direct question, while answering the two-step version differently. Others identify as nonbinary but not transgender. That is one more reason different surveys, with different questions, produce different totals, and why researchers treat the figures as estimates with margins of error rather than exact headcounts.

Why Counting Is Hard

Researchers who work on this topic describe several real challenges:

No direct census count. The decennial US census has never asked about gender identity, so there is no official headcount to anchor estimates against.
Small population, big sampling challenge. When roughly half of one percent of adults identify as transgender, even large surveys capture relatively few respondents, which widens the margin of error.
Disclosure. Some people do not disclose their gender identity to survey-takers, particularly in phone or in-person interviews, which can push estimates downward.
Definitions and wording. Some people whose gender differs from their sex assigned at birth do not use the word “transgender” for themselves, while surveys that use broader two-step questions capture more of them.
A moving target. Social acceptance, language, and willingness to identify have all shifted over the past two decades, so a 2011 estimate and a 2022 estimate are measuring partly different things.

Have the Numbers Grown Over Time?

Estimates of the transgender population have generally risen over the past 15 years. The important nuance researchers stress is that a rising estimate does not necessarily mean the underlying population grew at the same rate. Three things changed at once: surveys got better at asking the question, more people became willing to answer honestly, and younger generations use these identity terms more readily.

In other words, part of the increase is better measurement, and part reflects real social change. Disentangling the two is exactly what demographic researchers argue about, which is another reason you see ranges rather than a single agreed number.

What the Numbers Do and Do Not Tell You

A national estimate is an average that hides a lot of variation. The Williams Institute’s state-level analysis found that the share of adults identifying as transgender varies by state, with some states showing notably higher percentages than others. Age breakdowns show the same pattern: identification is most common among the youngest measured age groups.

What a population estimate cannot tell you is anything about any individual person’s experience. It is a demographic data point, useful for understanding the scale of a population for research, health planning, and policy discussion, and not much beyond that. Anyone quoting a number in a debate should be able to say which survey, which year, and which age range it covers. If they cannot, treat the number with caution.

The Bottom Line

The most widely cited current answer to “how many trans people in the US” is about 1.6 million people ages 13 and older, per the Williams Institute’s 2022 study, with roughly 1.3 million adults and 300,000 youth in the 13-17 range. Other surveys land in a similar range for adults, around half a percent to 0.6% of the adult population. Estimates vary because of survey wording, methodology, age ranges, and the genuine difficulty of measuring a small population without a census count.

If you want the fuller picture, the transgender overview article covers terminology, history, and demographics in more depth. And if you enjoy factual explainers on everyday questions, you may like our piece on how much a nickel is actually worth, or for something completely different, our beginner guides to playing padel and freediving deeper.

How Many Trans People in the US? The Numbers Explained