The Office for National Statics has released a report from their survey indicating that the population of gay and bisexual men and women is much lower than the previous 5-7% estimates.
According to the report released today, they estimate that:
- 481,000 are gay (mostly men) – 1%
- 245,00 are bixexual (mostly women) – 0.5%
- 242,000 are ‘other’ – 0.5%
The survey also indicated that 1,393,000 (2.8%) people don’t know or refused to respond. So – this into account – we may in fact be closer to the 5% estimates that were used by ministers during the introduction of the Civil Partnership legislation.
Unsurprisingly London has the highest gay population at 2.2% whereas Northern Ireland comes lowest with only 0.9%.
Read the full report: Measuring Sexual Identity: An Evaluation Report (pdf)
What do you think could be the effects of this report, if any?
So So Gay
