California has the largest LGBT population in the US
California has the largest LGBT population in the US with 2.7 million, according to analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
The nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank, which reviewed the data of the US Census Bureau, reported that Texas was at second place with a population of 1.8 million.
Hans Johnson, a PPIC senior fellow, told Newsweek that Texas at second place wasn’t surprising, given its second-largest overall population: “We might expect them to be one-two in terms of their LGBT populations.”
California compared to other states
The bureau’s surveys included questions about sexual orientation and gender identity but focused on the four identities of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders.
According to the data, California’s share of adults that identify as LGBT is around 9.1 percent, which is higher than the share in the rest of the US at 7.9 percent.
Texas, which was at second place, had a share of 8.4 percent, followed by New York with 8.2 percent. Meanwhile, North Carolina had the lowest share at 6.3 percent.
Johnson said Texas’ ranking could be in part because Texas is “not totally dissimilar to California in terms of having a very large metropolitan area population.”
Oregon had the highest LGBT share among all the states with 12.3 percent. At the other end, Mississippi and South Dakota had the lowest with 5.0 percent each.
Looking at the data in California
The LGBT community in California has a broad range of identities, which is not all captured in the census data.
According to the PPIC, about 49 percent of LGBT adults tagged themselves as bisexual, which is similar to the rest of the US.
Around a third or 36 percent describe themselves as gay or lesbian, while 15 percent described themselves as transgender.
More men identified as gay with 722,000 as compared to women identifying as lesbian with 257,000. However, more women identified as bisexual with 928,000 as compared to men with 363,000.
Lastly, majority of transgender adults were assigned female at birth with 60 percent. More than half of transgender adults or 54 percent identified as transgender, with 23 percent as male, and 23 percent as female.
The lowdown of young LGBT adults
Meanwhile, younger adults are more likely to to identify as LGBT as compared to older adults. One in five young adults identified as LGBT as compared to only one in twenty older adults.
Johnson said this pattern is similar nationwide with “young adults much, much more likely to identify as LGBT than older adults.”
Majority of the LGBT young adults identified as bisexual or 68 percent, with 27 percent identifying as gay or lesbian, and 14 percent as transgender.
However, five percent identified as transgender but not as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
For older LGBT adults, around 49 percent are more likely to identify as gay or lesbian, with around 31 percent identifying as bisexual or transgender.