Survey: Nearly 20% of Gen Z Adults Identify as LGBT

Roughly 20 percent of Generation Z adults are likely to identify as LGBT, and LGBT identification overall has become much more common in the U.S. in the past decade, according to aggregated polling data from 2022 Gallup telephone surveys published on Wednesday.  

“Adult members of Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2004 who were aged 18 to 25 in 2022, are the most likely subgroup to identify as LGBT, with 19.7 percent doing so. The rate is 11.2 percent among millennials and 3.3% or less among older generations,” according to the survey report. 

Gallup interviewed more than 10,000 U.S. adults, and asked respondents if they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something else, “allowing them to choose multiple identities.” The margin of sampling error is ±1 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence. 

A little over 2 percent of Generation Z adults identify as lesbian, 3.4 percent as gay, and 13.1 percent as bisexual. Nearly 2 percent identify as transgender, which is much higher than the overall U.S. adult percentage of 0.6, and 1.5 percent identify as “other LGBT.”

“The proportion of bisexual adults relative to other LGBT identities is higher among younger than older age groups. Two-thirds of LGBT individuals in Generation Z identify as bisexual, as do 62% of LGBT millennials,” the survey report explains. “In older generations, less than half of LGBT adults say they are bisexual, although it is still the largest subgroup of LGBT adults in Generation X. In the oldest two generations, LGBT individuals are most likely to identify as gay.”

Gallup found that LGBT identification has become increasingly common in the United States in the past decade, though the percentage “has been stable” in the past year. Overall in 2022, 7.2 percent of U.S. adults identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual. The survey report points out that the current percentage “is double” what it was when Gallup first began polling on the subject ten years ago. 

Still, 86 percent of U.S. adults say they are heterosexual, while 7 percent chose not to answer. Based off the data showing how younger people are identifying as something other than straight, Gallup said the “LGBT share of the entire U.S. adult population can be expected to grow in future years.” 

“However, this growth depends on younger people who enter adulthood in future years continuing to be much more likely to identify as LGBT than their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents,” the report states.