Vanderbilt University Study on Trans Employment
A recent study by Christopher Carpenter and Gilbert Gonzales of Vanderbilt University explores socioeconomic outcomes for transgender Americans using data from the an annual telephone survey of over 400,000 individuals in the United States that asks people about their employment, income, health insurance coverage and overall health. It’s called the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey.
The study is important because it began asking respondents their sexual orientation and gender identity in 2014. When asked “Are you transgender?” over 2,100 adults responded “yes.”
Although this is only a fraction of 1% of the total survey sample, this is a much larger sample of transgender people than has been used in other survey-based studies. And, importantly, it allowed us to examine transgender individuals from states as diverse as Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Idaho and Florida.
The most consistent pattern they found is that individuals who described themselves as transgender did much worse in aspects of their lives that affect their economic well-being – like educational attainment, employment and poverty status – than otherwise comparable individuals who did not identify as transgender.