Bisexuality on the rise
The number of American adults who identify as LGBTQ+ has skyrocketed in recent years, but there's one group that's been driving the uptick.
Younger bisexual women were largely behind the increase, with percent of today's U.S. adults now identifying as LGBTQ+.
Why It Matters
Gen Z has had an increasingly different relationship with sexuality than their elders.
According to a recent PRRI report, nearly 30 percent of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+. That's a high figure when you take into account Baby Boomers only identified as LGBTQ+ 4 percent of the time. Even compared to millennials, Gen Z is a notably more sexually fluid generation, as millennials only identified as LGBTQ+ 16 percent of the time.
What To Know
The Gallup survey has tracked LGBTQ+ identification for 12 years, and the rates of adults identifying with the community has nearly tripled in that time.
While today's young adults are more likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, the most notable increase driving the shift is due to more primarily adolescent women identifying as bisexual.
In , percent o
LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Rises to %
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup’s latest update on LGBTQ+ identification finds % of U.S. adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual in This represents an increase of more than a percentage point versus the prior estimate, from Longer term, the figure has nearly doubled since and is up from % in , when Gallup first measured it.
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LGBTQ+ identification is increasing as younger generations of Americans enter adulthood and are much more likely than older generations to say they are something other than heterosexual. More than one in five Gen Z adults -- those born between and , who were between the ages of 18 and 27 in -- identify as LGBTQ+. Each older generation of adults, from millennials to the Silent Generation, has successively lower rates of identification, down to % among the oldest Americans, those born before
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LGBTQ+ identification rates among juvenile people have also increased, from an average % of Gen Z adults in through to an average of % over th
What is Behind the Generational Jump in Bisexual Identity?
Newsletter March 9,
Daniel A. Cox
The number of Americans who determine as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is on the rise. A recent Gallup poll found that seven percent of Americans are now LGBT. Over the past 10 years, the number of LGBT Americans has doubled in size.
But that’s not the most interesting part of Gallup’s report. There is a fascinating generational pattern as well. New adults express far greater fluidity in their sexual preferences and identities than previous generations. One in five Gen Zers are LGBT. What’s remarkable is how much this multiply is driven by the rapid growth of bisexual identity. The vast majority of Gen Z LGBT people are bisexual. This is not true for Baby Boomers—the majority of LGBT Boomers are either gay or lesbian.
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Survey Reports
Recent years have seen a slew of polls showing a significant increase in people in the United States who identify as non-heterosexual, particularly amongst younger generations. Nearly one quarter of year-olds (Gen Z) identify as LGBTQ, and half of those are self-identified bisexuals.
What’s driving this increase, and is it “real”? This dramatic rise in bisexuality has led many to interrogate whether this bisexual identity reflects true sexual interest in both sexes, or whether it might verb social dynamics that own elevated the value of non-heterosexual identity. These questions aren’t new - in the ’s, Newsweek suggested rising bisexuality was famous because it was “Chic.”
Bisexuality is often questioned by both heterosexuals and homosexuals, challenged as “just a phase,” as “performative,” or “confusion.” As a group, bisexuals tend to be the least “out,” compared to other sexual orientations, at least, in past generations. This is referred to as bi invisibility. But, in the younger generations, this trend appears to be changing significantly, with more and more young people