This image was removed due to legal reasons.

Five years ago, the University of California-Los Angeles law school's Williams Institute, which conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, announced that there were approximately 700,000 Americans identifying as transgender.


But that estimate may have been far too small. Today, according to the Institute's newest survey, there are about 1.4 million transgender people in America, or roughly 0.6% of the adult population. The new survey drew from a larger Centers for Disease Control (CDC) database to get the estimate, double the Institute's previous estimate, and a much higher number than researchers in earlier years had found.

Notably, North Carolina, which has put itself at the center of the national debate over transgender rights in America when it passed a law regulating bathroom use by biological sex, was found to have the 7th-largest overall transgender population in the country.


Here are the numbers of transgender people estimated by the Institute to live in each state, ranked by highest to lowest percentage of population that identifies as transgender (with each state's approximate total transgender population in parentheses).



District of Columbia: 2.77% of the population is transgender (approximately 14,550 transgender people) Hawaii: 0.78% (8,450) California: 0.76% (218,400) New Mexico: 0.75% (11,750) Georgia: 0.75% (55,650) Texas: 0.66% (125,350) Florida: 0.66% (100,300) Oregon: 0.65% (19,750) Oklahoma: 0.64% (18,350) Delaware: 0.64% (4,550) Tennessee: 0.63% (31,200) Washington: 0.62% (32,850) Arizona: 0.62% (30,550) Nevada: 0.61% (12,700) Mississippi: 0.61% (13,650) Alabama: 0.61% (22,500) North Carolina: 0.60% (44,750) Louisiana: 0.60% (20,900) Arkansas: 0.60% (13,400) Vermont: 0.59% (3,000) Minnesota: 0.59% (24,250) South Carolina: 0.58% (21,000) Massachusetts: 0.57% (29,900) Indiana: 0.56% (27,600) Virginia: 0.55% (34,500) Missouri: 0.54% (25,050) Kentucky: 0.53% (17,700) Colorado: 0.53% (20,850) Rhode Island: 0.51% (4,250) New York: 0.51% (78,600) Illinois: 0.51% (49,750) Maine: 0.50% (5,350) Maryland: 0.49% (22,300) Alaska: 0.49% (2,700) Ohio: 0.45% (39,950) Pennsylvania: 0.44% (43,800) New Jersey: 0.44% (30,100) Connecticut: 0.44% (12,400) Wisconsin: 0.43% (19,150) New Hampshire: 0.43% (4,500) Michigan: 0.43% (32,900) Kansas: 0.43% (9,300) West Virginia: 0.42% (6,100) Idaho: 0.41% (4,750) Nebraska: 0.39% (5,400) Utah: 0.36% (7,200) South Dakota: 0.34% (2,150) Montana: 0.34% (2,700) Wyoming: 0.32% (1,400) Iowa: 0.31% (7,400) North Dakota: 0.30% (1,650)

And here's the map:

This image was removed due to legal reasons.

The researchers found that transgender people are more commonly found among certain demographic groups.

“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, told the New York Times. “And they are also younger.”


That helps explain why DC's rate is so high, as it is a densely-populated urban center where people of color are in the majority, Herman said in an email. Gallup polling has also showed that DC has a relatively high percentage of LGBT-identified adults.

In 2014, 19 states included a question about transgender identity on their Behaviora Risk Factor Survey System CDC survey, and the number of states that ask that question is growing, the Institute said. It used additional data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to develop estimates of the transgender-identified adult populations of the other 31 states.


Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.