Report says 2.3 percent of U.S. population gay or bisexual

San Francisco, July 15, (People’s Daily Online) A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday finds that 2.3 percent of the U.S. population identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

Published on July 15 by the CDC, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is the first one that measures Americans’ sexual orientation on a large-scale in the past 57 years. If the percentage 2.3 is translated into U.S. population, the number is about 7,271,426, that is, almost 7.3 million Americans are gays, lesbians or bisexuals. (According to the census, the United States population on July 4, 2013 was 316,148,990.)

According to the report, 96.6 percent of adults identified as “straight”, 1.6 percent identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent called themselves bisexual; 1.1 percent said “I don’t know”.

The NHIS study also found that bisexual women were twice as likely to experience serious anxiety while bisexual men were more likely to indulge in binge drinking than others. Roughly twice as many women than men identified as bisexual, with 0.9 percent of female respondents saying they were attracted to both sexes.

About 34,500 Americans aged between 18 and 64 participated in the survey, which makes it widely recognized.