Over 3% of U.S. high schoolers identify as transgender, national survey finds
About 3.3% of high school students identify as transgender, and 2.2% reported questioning if they were trans, according to new data from the CDC.
About 3.3% of high school students identify as transgender and another 2.2% have at some point questioned if they were one, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The data, which was collected as part of the CDC’s national 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of more than 20,000 students in public and private high schools in the United States, provides the first nationally representative estimates of trans identity among students.
It found that trans and questioning students more often experienced violence, poor mental health, suicidal thoughts, unstable housing and less school connectedness than their peers who are cisgender, meaning they identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.
About one-quarter, 26%, of trans and questioning students attempted suicide in the past year compared with 11% of cisgender female students and 5% of cisgender male students, the CDC found. One in 10, or 10.3%, of trans students said they had a suicide attempt treated by a doctor or nurse in the past 12 months, compared to 3.7% of questioning students, 2.6% of cisgender female students and 1% of cis male students.
“That level of distress and that level of experience of stigma and violence is really heartbreaking and is something we must address,” Kathleen Ethier, director of the division of adolescent and school health for the CDC, said.
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