A recent comprehensive survey on participant estimates that over a million American adults currently recognize as transgender.
This is in reference to a research conducted in 2014 which involved more than 150,000 adult Americans in 19 states in the United States of America.
Transgender people recognizes with or express a gender identity that’s different from the gender they were born with. According to the researchers, less that 1% of respondents answered “yes” when asked, “Do you consider yourself to be transgender?”
The study found that 0.28% of transgender individuals were more likely to identify as male-to-female while only 0.16% recognized as female-to-male.
According to Dr. Halley Crissman of the University of Michigan, transgender adults were more likely to be non-white than white. Dr. Crissman states that the transgender population is a racially diverse population in the United States population.
Surprisingly, the majority of transgender population faces economic hardship. According to the study, 26% of the participants live below the poverty line, against 15.5% who are above. The researchers also said that transgender people were also less likely to have attended college.
Crissmans’s team stated that these inequalities yielded negative implications for the health of the transgender population.
But in other respects, the transgender population is living the same life like other Americans. Approximately half of both transgender and non-transgender persons are married, as an example, and their employment levels were the same.
Out of privacy stigma and privacy concerns, many participants could not answer “yes” to the survey question. This is a clear indication that the figures could still be an underestimation.
The researchers also said that their findings are further efforts by the marginalized population to help improve the lives of transgender Americans.
Crissman’s team said that the challenges many transgender persons face are an indication that the deserve support to help them tackle the factors that deter them from pursuing education, which stems from discrimination and harassment.
This report was published online Dec. 20 in the American Journal of Public Health.