The number of straight people is declining, according to the Office of National Statistics.
New figures reveal the number of people over the age of 16 who identify as straight or heterosexual dropped from 94.4% in 2012 to 93.2% in 2017.
This means a jump from around 950,000 (1.5%) lesbian, gay and bisexual people in 2012 to 1.1 million (2%) in 2017.
The remaining percentages account for people who chose ‘other’ or ‘do not know or refuse’ options for the sexuality question.
Interestingly, the study found males (2.3%) are more likely to identify as LGB, than females (1.8%) in 2017.
People aged 16 to 24 years were most likely to identify as LGB in 2017 (4.2%). The study also found people in London (2.6%) were the most likely to identify as LGB, while people in the North East and East of England the least likely (1.5%).
Paula Guy from the Population Statistics Division of the Office for National Statistics said: ‘We estimate that 4.2% of people aged 16 to 24 years identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, a higher proportion than for other older age groups.
She then added: ‘Around 7 in 10 of the lesbian, gay or bisexual population are single and have never married or registered a civil partnership.
‘This reflects the younger age structure of this population and that legal unions for same-sex couples are relatively new,’ she said in a press release.
Read the full report.
Trends in LGB marriages
The new study also said LGB people (69.4%) are more likely to be unmarried or in a civil partnership.
Another recent set of statistics reported gay and bisexual men are more likely to marry later in life.
In 2014, the average age for women marrying men jumped to 31, with men marrying women at 33. But the average age of women marrying women was 35 and men marrying men was 38.
This may be because older LGBTI people, who couldn’t marry before, can now tie the knot.
In 2015, the average age of men marrying men jumped up to almost 40.
Similarly, another study reported far more lesbians divorce their wives than gay men their husbands.
Out of the 112 divorces among same-sex couples in 2016, over three-quarters (78%) of them were among two women.
See also:
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