Science

More Americans Identify as LGBT Than Ever Before

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The number of American adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) is at an all-time high.

According to the results of a new Gallup poll, 4.5 percent of Americans identify as part of the LGBT community. The organization examined 340,000 people for this survey.

The number of LGBT Americans has been growing for the last six years. The percentage is up from 4.1 percent in 2016 and 3.5 percent in 2012, which was the first year Gallup began polling for this data. From this info, Gallup calculated the number of LGBT American adults to be more than 11-million.

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Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1999) are credited with the rise. In the last two years, the number of millennials who identify as LGBT surged from 7.3 percent to 8.1 percent. This lift is the most significant increase of any generation since the poll began.

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Gallup also analyzed the data based on race, gender and income. “The LGBT percentage has risen among all race and ethnic groups since 2012, although not on an equal basis,” they explain.

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For gender, more women (5.1 percent) identify as LGBT than men (3.9 percent). And, regarding race, Hispanics and Asians have noticed the most notable increase. In 2012, 4.3 percent of Hispanics identified as LGBT, and by 2017, it expanded to 6.1 percent. For Asians, the rate grew from 3.5 to 4.9 percent.

Concerning income, the report states, “LGBT identification is more common among those with lower incomes, as has been the case consistently since 2012.”

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