Sexual orientation, further personal characteristics, England and Wales: Census 2021
This compares sexual orientation with things like religion, education, ethnicity, employment, health, and disability.
#census 2021
This is less useful since we now have the census data for the same topics, but the survey can show a trend over the years since 2017.
Let's compare the survey and the census
- A census is generally considered to be more representative than a survey, since it asks questions to the entire population, instead of a sample.
- The question for the survey was slightly different than for the census. Both had the options as Straight/Heterosexual, Gay/Lesbian, Bisexual, and Other. However, the census gave the option to write in an answer under Other, while the survey did not. This is as far as I can tell, I might be missing something, see here.
- Also, the census data and the survey data use different age categories for reporting. Both share the 16-24 and 25-34 age categories, but the survey then uses 35-49, 50-64, and 65+ while the census uses 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, and 75+.
Now that I've said all that, here is a table comparing the census data and the survey data. Note that I have grouped Pansexual, Asexual and Queer into the Other category for the census. I am aware that without the write-in option, some people's responses may have been different.
| Sexual orientation | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2021 Census |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heterosexual or straight | 95.0 | 94.6 | 93.7 | 93.6 | 93.4 | 93.4 | 89.4 |
| Gay or lesbian | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.6 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.54 |
| Bisexual | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.1 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 1.28 |
| Other | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.34 |
| Do not know or refuse | 2.3 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 2.6 | 3.0 | 2.7 | 7.5 |
As you can see, the census had a much higher proportion of people not answering the particular question, at 7.5%, while the survey's refusal rate is less than half of that. The trend over the years with the survey is pointing less heterosexual, but there don't seem to be major changes year on year.
A follow up to the previous release.
Key points:
- Older people are more likely to identify as cis and/or hetero.
- Do remember that this was only open to people over 16 years old, and that there were only two options for the sex question.
- 16-24 year olds are more likely to identify as bisexual than gay or lesbian, unlike every other age group.
- Over half of LGB+ people are in the 16-24 (28.40%) and 25-34 (29.48%) categories.
- Males more likely to identify as gay or lesbian than females.
- Females more likely to identify as bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer or LGB+ in general.
- Nearly a quarter of trans people (24.11%) are in the 16-24 category.
- When comparing the sex question to gender identity, around one third of trans people gave their sex as being their assigned sex. (66.16% of trans women answered female to the sex question, 67.50% of trans men answered male to the sex question)
- Around two thirds of non-binary people answered female to the sex question. (67.54% compared to 32.46% male)
It's all very interesting, do take a look.