A new Gallup survey, touted as the largest of its kind, estimates that 3.4 per cent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
The findings, released Thursday, were based on interviews with more than 121,000 people. Gallup said it is the largest study ever aimed at calculating the nation's LGBT population.
The report's lead author, demographer Gary Gates of the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, said he hoped the findings would help puncture some stereotypes about gays and lesbians while illustrating the diversity of their community.
"Contemporary media often think of LGBT people as disproportionately white, male, urban and pretty wealthy," he said. "But this data reveal that relative to the general population, the LGBT population has a larger proportion of non-white people and clearly is not overly wealthy."
According to the survey, conducted between June and September, 4.6 per cent of African-Americans identify as LGBT, four per cent of Hispanics, 4.3 per cent of Asians and 3.2 per cent of whites. Overall, a third of those identifying as LGBT are nonwhite.
There was a slight gender difference - 3.6 per cent of women identified as LGBT, compared to 3.3 per cent of men. And younger adults, aged 18 to 29, were more likely than their elders to identify as LGBT. One striking difference: among 18-to-29-year-olds, 8.3 per cent of women identify as LGBT, compared with 4.6 per cent of men the same age.
In contrast to some previous, smaller studies, the Gallup survey found that identification as LGBT is highest among Americans with the lowest levels of education. Among those with a high school education or less, 3.5 per cent identify as LGBT, compared with 2.8 per cent of those with a college degree and 3.2 per cent of those with postgraduate education.
A similar pattern was found regarding income groups. More than five per cent of those with annual incomes of less than $24,000 identify as LGBT, compared to 2.8 per cent of those making more than $60,000 a year.
Among those who report income, about 16 per cent of LGBT individuals have incomes above $90,000 per year, compared with 21 per cent of the overall adult population.
