Most queer Americans are bisexual, new study finds

LGBTQ+ in America? Odds are, you’re the B.

So says a new study from Gallup, which surveyed more than 12,000 Americans over the age of 18. It found that 7.6% of American adults identify as LGBTQ+, and of those people, 57.3% identify as bisexual. Overall, bisexual folks make up 4.4% of the adult U.S. population.

Among queer people, gay is the next most common identity at ​​18.1%. That’s followed by lesbian at 15.1% and transgender at 11.8%. Respondents could select as many identities as they felt applied to them.

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LGBTQ+ identification in America has more than doubled in the past decade. When Gallup first conducted this survey in 2012, only 3.5% of Americans self-identified as queer. That percentage has steadily risen year by year, leading to the 7.6% figure we have today.

The study attributes these rising numbers to Gen Z aging into adulthood. More than one in five Gen Z adults (ages 18 to 26) identify as LGBTQ+, with 22.3% of the generation’s adults being queer. LGBTQ+ identification approximately doubles with each new generation: for Millenials, it’s 9.8%; for Gen X, 4.5%; for Baby Boomers, 2.3%; and for the Silent Generation, just 1.1%.

The bisexual majority persists among Gen Z, too, with 15.3% of all Gen Z adults identifying as bisexual. That’s more than two thirds of all queer Gen Zers.

The study also broke results down by gender. It says that women are more than twice as likely as men to identify as LGBTQ+, with 8.5% to men’s 4.75. Women are also most likely to identify as bisexual, while men identify as gay and bisexual in equal measure. More than one in five Gen Z women identify as bisexual at 20.7%.

“The generational differences and trends point to higher rates of LGBTQ+ identification, nationally, in the future,” reads the study’s conclusion. “If current trends continue, it is likely that the proportion of LGBTQ+ identifiers will exceed 10% of U.S. adults at some point within the next three decades.”

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