The British government likely overestimated the number of self-identified transgender people in the country due to a lack of understanding of the English language among immigrant groups.
In the most recent national census, conducted in 2021, around 262,000 people, or around 0.5 per cent of the population of England and Wales checked “no” to when asked if they identified as a different gender from the one they were born as.
However, this week, a deputy director at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Mary Gregory said that there was “potential bias” in how the question was asked and therefore the number of trans-identified people was likely overestimated, the BBC reports.
Gregory said that some people who claimed to be transgender on the census questionnaire had “lower levels of English proficiency, some of whom may have mistakenly given an answer suggesting they were trans.”
She claimed that the number of cases were “relatively small” but still represented a large enough figure to skew results for areas of the country “where there are higher levels of non-English speakers.”
The precision of the figures is important as they can be used by the government when determining allocation of state funds.
The 2021 Census was the first in the history of the country to ask people if they identified as a different gender from the sex they were born as.
According to analysis of the survey from Oxford University, people who lacked English language proficiency were ten times more likely than native speakers to be listed under the category of “unspecified gender”.
While those who did not speak English as their main language only represented 10 per cent of all adults, they represented 29 per cent of all adults listed as transgender.
Dr Michael Biggs, professor of sociology at Oxford, said in April: “The only plausible explanation is that many immigrants with lower English proficiency were understandably confused by the gender question and mistakenly answered in the negative.
“Most of them did not write in any identity, and so were categorised as unspecified gender; some of them wrote in their sex and were categorised as trans men or trans women.”