“From prior research, we know that trans people are more likely to be from racial and ethnic minorities, particularly from Latino backgrounds,” Jody L. Herman, a scholar of public policy at the institute, said. “And they are also younger.”

“So state demographics on race and age can impact the percentage of trans people in those states,” she added.

A comparable estimate for transgender youth in the United States does not yet exist. As elusive as the adult numbers are to track, figures for adolescents, who are already in a molting process of identity, are harder still. Researchers have not yet concurred on a reliable method to tabulate transgender teenagers, much less younger children, though they are at the center of the debates over school bathroom policies.

The new figures were drawn from a question that 19 states elected to pose in 2014 as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a comprehensive telephone health survey. The researchers also used Census Bureau data to develop population estimates in the remaining 31 states.

Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy and education organization based in Washington, welcomed the new estimates and predicted that in time, they would continue to rise. As she looked at the state figures, she pointed to North Carolina, currently ground zero for contested legislation about bathroom accessibility and anti-discrimination policies. Researchers estimated that state’s population of transgender people to be 44,750.

“Even if it’s 40,000 or 30,000, that’s a lot more than they thought,” Ms. Keisling said. “That helps us to say, ‘Don’t use us politically — you have to do something right by us. There are a lot of us living in your state.’”