By Jody Herman, Senior Scholar of Public Policy, and Andrew R. Flores, Distinguished Visiting Scholar
The Conversation
August 28, 2025

Researchers have traditionally had a difficult time tracking the number of Americans who identify as transgender.

But over the past decade, our work has become easier, largely thanks to federal data. In 2014, for the first time, the federal government included a question on transgender identity in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System. It subsequently added gender identity questions to other surveys, like the National Crime Victimization Survey. Since 2016, we’ve been able to use federal datasets to estimate the number of people who identify as transgender at the national and state levels.

Our recently published analysis suggests that 2.1 million U.S. adults identify as transgender. In our prior study, published in 2022, we found that 1.3 million U.S. adults identified this way. In our new report, we also found that 724,000 youth age 13 to 17 identified as transgender.

Though data sources are being erased, the transgender population will not be. And yet it will likely be at least a decade before we can publish updated figures on the estimated number of people living in the U.S. who identify as transgender.

- Jody Herman, Senior Scholar of Public Policy, and Andrew R. Flores,
Distinguished Visiting Scholar

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