Estimating LGBT Proportions in the Population

A recent Gallup poll showed that most Americans estimate that at least one fifth of the population is gay or lesbian, with thirty-five percent believing that a quarter of the people are. In reality, more like 3.8 percent of people self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, according to a review of the data by researcher Gary J. Gates.

This tendency to overestimate the prevalance of homosexuality almost certainly reflects the focus on LGBT issues in the media, as citizens fight for their rights and come out of the closet, frequently attracting some publicity.

Here's Gallup's table:



They asked the question in 2002 separately for gay males and females.

People are not very good at estimating probabilities -- that's why things such as insurance and lotteries can exist, people overestimate the probabilities of rare events. These kinds of numbers are a better indicator of salience or the amount of attention an object receives than of its actual occurrence in the real world. And people these days are thinking about LBGT issues more than they used to, as marriage laws are debated and passed, as discrimination is revealed and stopped, as more people who are familiar in the media come out of the closet.

As Gallup says:

Americans' current collective estimate -- which is substantially higher than Gates suggests -- is likely driven more by perceptions and exposure than by scientific measurement or reality. Gallup previously found that a majority of Americans personally know someone who is gay or lesbian, though Gallup did not ask Americans how many gay or lesbian individuals they know, or whether they know more individuals now than they did before. Additionally, Americans tend to have difficulty estimating percentages of population groups whose numbers are more widely known. Gallup a decade ago found Americans estimating much larger U.S. black and Hispanic populations than what the U.S. Census Bureau reported for those groups. U.S. Adults Estimate That 25% of Americans Are Gay or Lesbian

It is kind of interesting to see how the estimates break down demographically and politically:

Americans with lower incomes and less education give the highest estimates, on average, of the U.S. gay and lesbian population, and far higher estimates than those with higher incomes and more education. Americans aged 18 to 29 give a higher average estimate than older Americans, and women give a far higher average estimate than men.

Democrats, liberals, and those who say they are socially liberal are also more likely to give higher estimates than those at the other end of the spectrum. However, the differences by political or ideological leanings are in most cases not as wide as those seen by demographic group.

For comparison, Gallup links to a review of surveys done by UCLA researcher Gary J. Gates, found HERE. Taking some bullets from the executive summary:

• An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender.
  
• This implies that there are approximately 9 million LGBT Americans, a figure roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey.
  
• Among adults who identify as LGB, bisexuals comprise a slight majority (1.8% compared to 1.7% who identify as lesbian or gay).
  
• Women are substantially more likely than men to identify as bisexual. Bisexuals comprise more than half of the lesbian and bisexual population among women in eight of the nine surveys considered in the brief. Conversely, gay men comprise substantially more than half of gay and bisexual men in seven of the nine surveys.
  
• Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as LGB. An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2%) report that they have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior and nearly 25.6 million Americans (11%) acknowledge at least some same-sex sexual attraction.

So more than a tenth of people sometimes feel sexually attracted to someone of their own sex, and about one in twelve have acted on those feelings, but only about one person in thirty actually identifies as gay or lesbian, and most of those are bisexual.

That means that approximately one person in fifteen has homosexual feelings but does not identify as gay or lesbian, implying that some bisexuals identify themselves as gay or lesbian and some do not. I suppose they just take their sexual feelings as they come, sometimes you like meat and sometimes you like potatoes, it is not a big deal one way or the other.

There are nearly a million people in our little suburban Maryland county, so we'll round to that and bring these numbers home. If we have representative proportions of LGBT residents then:

• There are 3,000 transgender people in our county
  
• We have 38,000 residents who identify themselves as LGBT
  
• 110,000 people in our county have experienced or will experience sexual attraction to someone of their own sex
  
• 82,000 people in Montgomery County have or will have engaged in sexual activity with someone of their own sex

There is nothing to be gained by either side of the debate exaggerating these numbers. LGBT people are a minority in the population, but they are still a lot of people and numbers large or small do not in any way justify discrimination against them. The overestimates that are common in the population reflect well-documented cognitive biases and are interesting but do not change the issue in any significant way.