{"paper_id":"1ce28dc8-75db-4dca-ab05-8c575922b2e7","body_text":"1\n Yes, Trans is in Decline among Young Educated\n Americans\n A Reply to Critics on both the Left and Right\n Eric Kaufmann\n Date: Oct 17, 2025\n URL: https://erickaufmann.substack.com/p/yes-trans-is-in-decline-among-young\nHas the dramatic rise of transgender identification among young people gone into reverse?\nThat was my claim, published on Tuesday in a thread on X, at Unherd and in my new Centre for\nHeterodox Social Science report. The first chart is key: it shows the percentage of students in\nthree surveys identifying as a gender other than male or female. The non-binary share rose\nacross three independent surveys of educated young people between 2020 and 2023, then\ndeclined between 2022-23 and 2025. The fall in non-binary identification is quite dramatic, a\nhalving in just two years. This is the first indication that the transgender trend among young\npeople has reversed.\n\n\n2\nThe data is drawn from three sources. First, the massive annual Foundation for Individual\nRights in Education (FIRE) survey of American undergraduates. The latest wave covered over\n68,000 students at more than 250 institutions (skewed toward major research universities and\nliberal arts colleges). The FIRE survey can only sample a small fraction of the student body, so I\ncompare this data with two sources from individual institutions where a larger share of the\ntarget pool is surveyed. These include Andover Phillips Academy (a private elite prep school)\nwhich conducts an annual student survey that is generally answered by more than 3 in 4\n\n\n3\nstudents, and the Brown Daily Herald spring and fall polls of Brown University students, which\nreach as much as 50 percent of the target population. The fact all three tell a broadly similar\nstory is remarkable.\nThe other major finding in the report concerns sexual orientation. While the more traditional\ngay and lesbian category had a stable share across 2020-25, the proportion that is of\nnon-conforming sexual orientation - queer, questioning, bisexual, pansexual, asexual or other -\nhas risen and fallen along the same trajectory. This shows up in the non-heterosexual share, as\ncaptured in the graph below. There is a rise in most datasets to a peak in 2023, followed by\ndecline. (Bear in mind that data is missing in many series beyond 2023-24). Notice that while the\nnon-binary line above peaks at 9 percent of the total student body, the non-heterosexual share\npeaks much higher, between 30% and, in the case of Brown students, over 40%, of the total\nstudent population. Nearly half of Brown’s undergraduates were LGBTQ+ in 2023, and in some\nliberal arts colleges such as Smith College, that figure topped 50 percent in the FIRE data.\nJust so you know exactly what these lines are measuring, here are the questions that ran on the\nFIRE surveys in these years (Andover Phillips and Brown used very similar formats):\n1. Gender\nWhich of the following genders do you most identify with?\n1) Man\n2) Woman\n3) Nonbinary\n4) Agender\n5) Genderqueer or genderfluid\n\n\n4\n6) Unsure\n7) Prefer not to say\n2. Sexual Orientation\nWhat is your sexual orientation?\n1) Gay/lesbian\n2) Straight (heterosexual)\n3) Bisexual\n4) Pansexual\n5) Queer\n6) Fluid\n7) Same-gender-loving\n8) ASexual or aromantic\n9) Unsure\n10) Questioning\n11) Other\nThe trans proxy encompassed categories 3 through 7 in question 1. The BQ+ proxy for the\nsexual orientation question amalgamated answers 3 through 11.\nThe Reaction\nThe first thing to say is that the tweet thread went viral, retweeted by a number of major\nconservative accounts, among others, Elon Musk (via Wilfred Reilly), Donald Trump Jr and Matt\nWalsh. It was also covered widely in the press. The post had 30,000 likes and was seen 6.1\nmillion times. I have been on a number of TV and radio spots since, including Unherd and Fox\n(Laura Ingraham), with more in the offing.\n\n\n5\nThe Critics\nTwo main lines of critique soon emerged. The first more conceptual, concerning the\noperationalization of transgender, the second more technical, revolving around whether my\nanalysis should have used data weights.\n1. Non-binary is not Transgender\nThe first critique is that the survey I responses I used picked up non-binary identity which is not\nthe same as trans. The argument here is that a trans individual identifies with a binary gender\n(male or female) identity that is different from the one they were born into.\nMy fellow Vancouverite Billboard Chris Elston (whose work I generally admire), along with\nsome others who are campaigning against gender ideology, are worried that if people feel trans\nis decreasing they will relax the political campaign to reign in gender ideology in schools,\ninstitutions and the law. Chris cited a post from Benjamin Ryan, a centrist writer on this\nplatform, and a Swedish researcher on X.\n\n\n6\nMy first response is that the meaning of the term transgender is not fixed to only refer to binary\ntransgender individuals who identify as male or female. Movement organizations and activists\ninclude non-binary under their definition of trans.\n\n\n7\nSecond, even if we are focused only on binary trans individuals, the question is how they would\nanswer the gender question above. Even if most tick male or female (which is a big assumption\nthat I am skeptical of!), so long as the share who tick a non-binary option is non-trivial, the\nnon-binary category will be an indicator - even if somewhat muted - of trans identification. My\nstudy was not about providing an exact point estimate of the binary trans population, only the\ndirection and magnitude of the trend over time.\nThird, even if every binary trans individual ticked a male or female identity, the non-binary\ncategory is arguably the gateway between conventional gender identification and transgender\nidentification. That is, a girl who comes to believe she was born in the wrong body would go\nthrough a period of non-binary uncertainty before definitively moving to the other gender.\nThus if non-binary is increasing, the pool from which binary trans individuals springs will\nincrease, and the number who will fully transition will increase.\nThat is, non-binary and binary transgender trends should be correlated over time. Which\nmeans that trends in non-binary will reflect trends in binary trans identification.\n\n\n8\nI said as much in my response tweet on Thursday:\nAnd Benjamin Ryan was good enough to admit that there is no data that can disprove my\nchallenge (I accept that I don’t have the data either, but I think there are strong conceptual\nreasons to expect a correlation).\nJean Twenge, whose work I greatly respect, then produced an article which argued that while\nnon-binary is not exactly the same as trans, and my data focuses more on elite youth than the\nwider young population, there is an indication from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse\nsurvey data that transgender identification rose after 2021 and declined between early and late\n2024.\n\n\n9\nSadly, as Twenge notes, the Trump administration’s policies have meant that government\nsources can no longer ask questions such as these, so we won’t get 2025 data. This is one reason\nwhy I think people should try to keep facts and values separate: asking about trans is not the\nsame thing as endorsing trans. I have a similar skepticism about the power of census racial\ncategories to shape identity.\nOf course it is theoretically possible that you could get a fall in non-binary share but no decline\nin binary trans identification, or even hardcore (chemical, surgical) transitions. But I think that\n\n\n10\nis unlikely. These phenomena have risen together and it would be surprising if they did not fall\ntogether.\n2. I Did Not Weight my Data\nThe second line of attack came more squarely from left-wing accounts. Erin Reed, who runs a\npopular blog on the left, triumphantly declared a ‘gotcha’ that debunked the entire story from\n‘far-right professor Eric Kaufmann.’ This was a more technical claim, which argued that\nbecause I did not use survey weights (which are used to make survey responses match the\npopulation if some groups such as men or Hispanics are undersampled), the results were\ninvalid. I had not used the weights included in the FIRE data, and therefore my results were\n‘dead on arrival’. She managed to find a number of methodologists that endorsed that view. The\nsubtext: I was a methods neophyte who committed a schoolboy error.\n\n\n11\nThe source for Erin’s piece - which was picked up by other sympathetic sources - was blogger\nJacob Eliason, whose piece argued that I had made a ‘significant analytical error’ by not using\nsurvey weights.\n\n\n12\nEliason produced a chart showing that applying weights not only removed any increase in\nnon-binary identification, but actually showed the opposite: a big jump in non-binary in\n2024-25. Gender non-confirmity was not in decline, it was surging!\nBut take a look at Eliason’s graph, comparing dotted (my unweighted data) and solid lines (the\nweighted data) within each colour band. Warning lights should have been going off. Why? The\nfirst thing to notice is that the weighted solid lines for each colour pairing show more volatility\nover time than the unweighted dotted lines. For instance, even when looking at female share in\nred, this moves up and down a lot while the unweighted data is more stable.\nNow focus on the green lines for non-binary. If Eliason’s account is correct, non-binary share\nwas a stable 2% between 2020 and 2023, then jumped to 9-10% during 2024-25.\n\n\n13\nWhat that would mean is that instead of my chart, which shows an alignment between the FIRE\ndata and the Andover and Brown data (where sampling is much less of an issue due to a larger\ncoverage of the target population)…\n\n\n14\n..the reality is that the FIRE data (watch the orange line) exhibits a diametrically opposing trend\nfrom the others, not to mention from the non-conforming sexual orientation trends:\nWhy is Eliason’s chart wrong? The truth is that I had experimented with FIRE data weights, but\npast experience had taught me that when looking at small groups, applying weights can distort\n\n\n15\nsurvey results much more than they can help them approximate the population.\nWhat happens with weighting is that the raw data are ‘corrected’ to match a population (by sex,\nrace, school, and so forth). This makes sense when you are comparing universities for rankings\nsuch as FIRE’s free speech rankings. You need to be sure that you haven’t sampled a\ndisproportionately female group of students at Harvard and male students at Yale, knowing\nthat men are more pro-free speech than women, or the rankings won’t be fair. Official\npopulation and college data sources provide the demographics to adjust the raw survey data.\nThat’s the right approach, especially to construct rankings in a given year.\nBut there is a problem with using weights to look at aggregate trends over time. This arises in\ntwo ways. First, if there is a change in weighting methodology between years that affects certain\nquestions. This affects small groups like trans where a few individuals may be inflated or\ndeflated several times over in the survey. Second, because the aggregate ‘population’ shifts as\nsome colleges are included in certain years and others in other years, and so the weighting\nformula to derive nationally-representative samples varies over time.\nThis volatility means that going with the raw data may be a better strategy than applying\nweights which introduce more error than they correct for. In this case, I think the evidence is\nquite clear that weighting is a mistake.\nLo, all of a sudden, after my response to the weighting criticism, there was an ‘update’ from\nEliason recognizing (to his credit) that applying weights might not be such a great idea.\n\n\n16\nIt turns out that the gender benchmarks used by College Pulse to weight its FIRE survey were\nchanged in 2023-24, producing the spike in non-binary we saw in the weighted data.\nEliason then pivots to the argument that using unweighted data is a problem, illustrating his\nclaim by showing an unequal distribution of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors across\nthe years.\nBut when weights cannot be relied upon, there are other strategies one can use. Running a\nfixed-effects statistical model that controls for each college, as well as demographics such as\ngraduating class, financial aid status, socioeconomic background, race, religion and ideology\nscreens out the distorting possibilities that Eliason asserts. The result of such an exercise,\ngraphed below, confirms the ‘rise and fall’ pattern in my report.\nYear of study remains statistically significant in predicting whether a student identifies as\nneither male nor female even when controlling for many of the things weights correct for, i.e.\ndemographics and the mix of colleges.\n\n\n17\nTo end on a positive note, the debate on X shows that twitter is not a sewer of misinformation\nand partisan claims, but an ecosystem where claims can be challenged and defended and\nserious people can assess truth or falsehood.\nTrans is either in decline or it isn’t. I believe the data shows that it is, and that this represents a\nsignificant change in youth culture. It also has implications for the confidence of cultural\nprogressivism, as rising gender and sexual diversity is a key component of its historicist\nnarrative that humanity is progressively overcoming oppressive traditions.\nHowever, at the end of the day, future data will be the judge of whether this is a blip, the\nbeginning of the end of trans, or a decline that will settle out at a higher steady state than before\nthe trans awakening of the 2010s.","source_license":"CC-BY-4.0","license_restricted":false}