The Sharp Decline In Transgender Identification Among Young Adults
(ANALYSIS) Back in October, there was a splashy data finding from several surveys of young people: they were less likely to identify as transgender in the most recent data.
Eric Kaufmann reached that conclusion using results from a poll of Andover Phillips Academy students, data from Brown University, and a large questionnaire fielded by FIRE.
Then Jean Twenge ran the same analysis on college-aged respondents in the Cooperative Election Study and came to a very similar conclusion — the share of 18–22-year-olds who identified as transgender has dropped noticeably between 2022 and 2024.
To be honest, the three surveys Kaufmann used aren’t what I’d call high quality. The Andover and Brown data are literally just censuses of each college’s student body, and while the FIRE data are large (over 50,000 respondents), they’re not truly representative because they only include young adults currently attending one of fewer than 600 universities.
But the Twenge analysis really caught my attention because the Cooperative Election Study is a much higher-quality dataset. I use it all the time in my own work, not just because the 2024 sample included 60,000 respondents, but because it’s administered in a way that produces a genuinely representative cross-section of the United States.
So, my purposes today are twofold.
First, I want to replicate and validate the finding that trans identity is declining among young adults.
Second, I want to dig into why that’s happening.
Let’s tackle the first question. Has there been a noticeable decline in the share of 18–22-year-olds who identify as transgender over the last couple of years? The answer is unequivocal: Yes.
You can read the rest of this post on Substack.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.