4.5% of American adults identify as LGBT according to a new survey from Gallup. Extrapolating from the latest census population estimate, that works out to about 11,000,000 LGBT people.
The number of people identifying as LGBT has steadily increased over the past few years. This is the highest percentages of respondents who identified as part of the queer community.
In 2012, 3.5% of adults self-identified as LGBT. That number grew to 4.1% in 2016.
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Respondents were asked the question, “Do you, personally, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender?”
Millennials, born between 1980-1999, are the primary drivers of the expansion of self-identified LGBT people. While the percentage of baby boomers (born 1946 through 1964) and traditionalists (born prior to 1946), stayed the same, millennials increased by 2.3%. Generation X (those born from 1965 to 1979) was up only .2% from 2016 to 2017.
The increase in millennials between 2016 and 2017 (.8%) is the biggest year-to-year increase since the study started in 2012.
