(2015-06-09) The Search For The Best Estimate Of The Transgender Population

The Search for the Best Estimate of the Transgender Population. The most recent paper, published last month by the Census Bureau, analyzed people who most likely were transgender, based on the fact that they had changed their name or sex with the Social Security Administration

Since the Social Security Administration started in 1936, 135,367 people have changed their name to one of the opposite gender, and 30,006 also changed their sex accordingly, the study found. Of Americans who participated in the 2010 census, 89,667 had changed their names and 21,833 had also changed their sex.

Before Mr. Harris’s paper, researchers studied the transgender population using surveys. Administrative data from government records provides a different look, because surveys must be very large to accurately quantify such a small population

Another paper, published in 2011 by the Williams Institute, used survey data to attempt to count the transgender population. It estimated that 0.3 percent of the population, or 700,000 adults, identified that way.