How Many Transgender Children Are There?
Texas high school wrestler Mack Beggs is announced as the winner of a semifinal match of a wrestling tournament at Allen High School in Allen, Texas. Beggs, a transgender boy, has been undergoing hormone therapy as he transitions from female to male. The governing body that oversees Texas high school sports requires Beggs to wrestle in the girls' division because of its rule that restricts sports participation based on the sex listed on an athlete's birth certificate.
—Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News via AP
As policymakers and educators debate the rights of transgender children in schools, they have no federal data to answer even the most basic question: How many transgender children are there?
That's because publicly collected data on transgender individuals—part of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey—is not collected in every state, and participating states only survey adults.
Although it's generally believed that transgender children make up a relatively small share of the population, advocates surmise some are now more likely to "come out" and transition at younger ages than in years past because of greater public awareness of the issue.
About 0.7 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds living in the United States identify as transgender, some 150,000 teenagers, according to an estimate released in January by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. The think tank, which researches issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity, based its estimates on statistical modeling rather than direct surveys of children.
More work is needed to gather more representative and demographic data about How Many Transgender Children Are There? - Education Week:
