Students identifying as nonbinary are on the decline, new study says

New data suggests that fewer young adults are identifying as nonbinary, a term that refers to individuals who do not identify as male or female.

Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, released a report titled “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans,” in which he suggests that the percentage of nonbinary Gen Zers in America has declined in recent years.

Kaufmann compiled student survey results from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), as well as private college-prep school Andover Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island.

He also included data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveys of U.S. high school students — the most recent from 2023 — in addition to several smaller surveys.

In his report, he pointed out that FIRE surveyed over 50,000 U.S. undergrad students, mainly at leading research universities, this year. Their findings pointed out that only 3.6% of young adults identified as a gender other than male or female — a steady decline compared to 5.2% last year and 6.8% in 2023.

The data from Andover, meanwhile, shows 3% of students in 2025 identify in a nonbinary category, down from 7.4% in 2023; however, that does not stipulate transgender individuals who identify as male or female.

Similarly, at Brown University, 2.6% of the student body identified themselves as neither male nor female, a drastic drop from the 5% of students who answered that same question in 2022 and 2023.

The data he cites from Brown University does not include breakdowns for transgender students who would identify as male or female; it only denotes a downward shift in students identifying as nonbinary, genderqueer, or “questioning or unsure.”

According to recently released data from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, over 2.8 million U.S. individuals identify as transgender, including about 724,000 youth.

That report factored in federal surveys and health agency data from all 50 states.