D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has described the nation’s capital as “the gayest city in the world.” (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
A report released last month by the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ think tank affiliated with the University of California Law School in Los Angeles, shows that LGBT adults make up 14.5% of the adult population in the District of Columbia, a figure nearly twice as large as the 7.8% of LGBT adults in Oregon, which the report says has the second highest percentage of LGBT adults after D.C. The report shows that Delaware came in third place, with 7.5% of its adult population found to be LGBT.
It says the estimated total percentage of LGBT adults in the United States is 5.5%, which comes to a total number of 13,942,200.
The 16-page report, entitled Adult LGBT Population in the United States, says it bases its LGBT population figures on data gathered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey for the combined years of 2020 and 2021, the most recent data available from that survey.
It points out that the CDC conducts its annual surveillance survey that gathers a wide range of health-related and demographic data, including sexual orientation and gender identity, by telephone “with representative samples of non-institutionalized adults” who live in each state, D.C. and three U.S. territories. Respondents to the survey remain anonymous, the report says.
“LGBT people reside in all regions of the U.S.,” the report reads. “Consistent with the overall population in the United States, more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region,” comprising 35.9% of the southern states. It states LGBT adults make up 24.5% of the population in the Western U.S., 21.1% in the Midwest and 18.5% in the Northeast region.
As expected, the report adds the actual number of LGBT adults is highest in the larger states compared to D.C., which the report says has an adult LGBT population of 81,400. California has the highest number of LGBT adult residents at 1,549,600, according to the report. The next highest is Texas, with 1,071,300, followed by Florida with 898,000, New York with 853,600 and Pennsylvania with 586,500.
“In terms of the number of LGBT adults, the top states with the largest number of LGBT adults are also the states with the largest overall populations, except for Washington, which is 13th in terms of overall adult population and 10th in terms of the adult LGBT population,” the report states.
Among the report’s findings is young people at the age of 18 to 24 are much more likely to self-identify as LGBT compared to those at an older age. It shows that 15.2% of people ages 18-25, or 4,659,600 people, identify as LGBT in the surveys. According to the report, 9.1% of people ages 25-34 identify as LGBT, 4.1% of those 35-49 identify as LGBT adults and 2.7% of those 50-64 identify as LGBT adults. Only 1.8% identify as LGBT among people 65 years of age or older, the report says.
USA Today reports that the Williams Institute report, which was released on Dec. 6, reconfirms earlier LGBT population surveys that also found the highest percentage of LGBT adults live in the South, with D.C. found to have the highest percentage of LGBT adults in previous surveys.
The full report can be accessed here.
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