Houston, Texas, Sep 3, 2025 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
A new report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimates that 1.0% of individuals aged 13 and older in the United States — approximately 2.8 million people — now identify as transgender, with younger generations significantly more likely to identify as such compared to older age groups.
According to the report, 0.8% of U.S. adults, or over 2.1 million people, identify as transgender, while 3.3% of youth aged 13 to 17, roughly 724,000 people, identify as transgender.
The findings, drawn from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) 2021-2023 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the 2021 and 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), provide the most comprehensive data yet on transgender youth, particularly from the 2023 YRBS.
The BRFSS, which began offering states the option to ask about transgender identity in 2014, saw 41 states include the question in at least one year from 2021 to 2023, up from 19 states in 2014.
The gender identity distribution among transgender adults is roughly evenly split: about one-third identify as transgender women (biological men), one-third as transgender men (biological women), and one-third as transgender nonbinary.
The study found the distribution to be consistent across U.S. regions and states, with no significant variations noted in the 2021-2023 data compared to earlier years.
Younger age groups more likely to identify as transgender
The data highlight an obvious generational trend: younger age groups are far more likely to identify as transgender than older ones, and individuals who identify as transgender are younger on average than the broader U.S. population. Among young adults aged 18 to 24, 2.7% identify as transgender, compared to just 0.3% of those aged 65 and older, a statistically significant difference.
Of those aged 13 and older who identify as transgender, 25.3% are youth aged 13 to 17 (up from 18.3% in prior estimates), 28.9% are young adults aged 18 to 24 (up from 24.4%), and 50.7% are aged 18 to 34. Overall, three-quarters (76.0%) of the transgender population aged 13 and older are under 35.
Gender ideology ‘isn’t going away’
Theresa Farnan, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPCC) focusing on the challenges of gender ideology through the Person and Identity Project, told CNA these numbers seem accurate and problematic.
“In some ways, these numbers are shocking,” Farnan said, “and others, they don’t shock me at all. They actually seem kind of low.”
She cited a 2021 study at an urban school district that found nearly ten percent of the students identified as transgender.
The numbers codify “significant problems,” Farnan says.
“Gender ideology isn’t going away,” she continued. “There are 2.8 million people acting on this false anthropology; who have internalized it so much, they don’t think their body tells them anything about who they are.”
Executive orders banning transgender medical procedures on children, while good, will not solve what she calls a “youth-driven problem.”
In addition, policies promoting transgender ideology “will be right back in full force when a Democrat becomes president again,” she said.
State laws in conservative states “might not have teeth.” She pointed out that while such procedures are banned in Georgia, the law exempts procedures that are “life-saving.”
“A doctor will just say these procedures are life saving!” she said.
“There are cultural factors pushing this” ideology, she said. “If we’re going to get serious at keeping people from these harms, we need to address it at all levels.”
Farnan cited a recent study that showed young people are still “reachable.” Almost 90% of college students surveyed said they felt pressured to say they held more progressive views than they actually did just to “virtue signal” in order to conform. Nearly 80% said they self-censored about their views on gender ideology.
Clear upward trend
The 2023 data shows a clear upward trend in transgender identification, particularly among youth (3.3% vs. 0.7% in 2017) and young adults (2.7% vs. 1.3% in 2016 for 18-24), compared to older adults (0.3% for 65+).
These numbers confirm a trend observed in Williams Institute reports since 2011, which have tracked the size and characteristics of the transgender population.
According to the report, the 2023 estimate of 1.0% (2.8 million) is a significant increase from 0.6% (1.4 million) in 2016 and 0.7% (1.8 million) in 2020. This represents a 100% increase from 2016 and a 56% increase from 2020 in the estimated number of transgender individuals. The rise is attributed to better data collection (e.g., 41 states in 2021-2023 BRFSS vs. 19 in 2014) and increased willingness to identify as transgender, particularly among youth, probably due to changing cultural norms.
Farnan told CNA there are many risk factors leading to the increase in transgender identification, particularly among youth. “It very often co-occurs with mental health issues like depression, anxiety, attachment disorders, and sexual trauma” as well as “autism, parents’ mental health issues, and broken families.”
“Pornography use also plays a huge role, especially for boys,” she said.
It is also very difficult to extricate oneself from the transgender community once a young person has entered it, Farnan said. She referred to Robin Westman, the Minnesota man who killed 2 children and injured 17 more people last week. “If you express any doubts, everyone in that community turns on you,” she said.
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