Study finds much higher than expected percentage of transgender and gender non-conforming youth

Some buzz over a study involving Minnesota teens.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics this week, shows 3 percent of teens identify as neither “boy” nor “girl.” They’re seeing themselves as transgender or gender-fluid, among other terms.

That’s a percentage that was apparently significantly higher than expected by researchers who were only looking for health differences between gender non-conforming and teens who identify with the gender they’re labeled with at birth — also known as cisgender.

While the surprising percentage has become the story, University of Minnesota researchers also determined that transgender kids have much worse health overall than their cisgender counterparts.

The results seem to contradict a UCLA study from a year ago that estimated 0.7 percent of teens identified as a gender other than the one that was on their birth certificate.