These millions of Americans are more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed and have no family support
By Bryan Mena, CNN
Washington (CNN) — Quinn Merriss, an 18-year-old who identifies as transgender and non-binary, barely makes ends meet.
Merriss was kicked out of their home after years of tension and arguments with their parents over being transgender. They now live independently without any financial support from relatives, working as a server earning $5.50 an hour plus tips.
“I’m living paycheck to paycheck,” Merriss, who lives in an apartment in Cincinnati, told CNN. They manage to scrape by thanks to a housing assistance program, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Merriss’ plight illustrates the harsh economic realities of millions of Americans who identify as transgender and/or non-binary. The evidence from research and surveys is unmistakable: People whose gender identity does not match their sex at birth are more likely to experience financial hardships than the general population. (Some transgender people identify as “non-binary,” which means they don’t conform to one particular gender.)
They deal with “lower employment rates, lower household incomes, higher rates of poverty, greater public assistance use, and increased likelihood of food insecurity,” a 2022 study found. There are at least 5.3 million individuals who identify as transgender and/or non-binary in the United States, about the size of the Phoenix metropolitan area, according to the Pew Research Center.
In interviews with CNN, economists, researchers and transgender people themselves say “transphobia,” or negative beliefs and attitudes about trans people, is to blame. Transitioning genders can also cost tens of thousands of dollars, and being in the closet is well documented to take a toll on mental health.
What the statistics show
The dire economic straits of transgender and non-binary people hasn’t been explored for very long, though much has been uncovered in recent decades.
“We know that transgender people have been experiencing so many economic disparities ever since there has been data collected on them, going back 30 or 40 years,” said Kevin Nadal, a distinguished professor of psychology at City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
“If you see a trans person and they make you feel uncomfortable, that’s because you either haven’t been exposed to them much before or because you have very rigid ideas about gender,” Nadal said. Pew has also found that most Americans believe that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth, but favor protecting them from discrimination.
The United States Transgender Survey, conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, is releasing full results from “an unprecedented” 92,329 respondents later this year, its latest iteration since the previous survey in 2015. A preliminary analysis showed that living and working conditions remain as tough as ever.
More than a third of transgender people surveyed (34%) said they were experiencing poverty, and 30% said they’ve been homeless at least once in their lives. The unemployment rate among the transgender people surveyed was 18%, more than four times the current national rate.
The Census Bureau puts the poverty line for a single person at $14,880 in 2022, the year of the survey.
The pivotal role of family support
A person’s family plays a crucial role in their financial health, economists say, even with something as simple as providing shelter in adolescence or early adulthood. That safety net is often non-existent for transgender people.
“It’s a lot about how you start out in life,” said Jody Herman, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’ve found that trans people who had been kicked out of their homes or had family rejection experiences were more likely to be in an unstable economic position.”
Jay Woodman, a 29-year-old transgender man, fled his immediate family in Greenville, South Carolina, about six years ago with his partner, Alexander Taylor. The couple is currently living with Taylor’s parents in southern Maryland. Woodman said he has “no contact” with any of his relatives after it became clear they don’t support his gender identity.
“Unless you have financial help in some way from parents, grandparents or friends, forget about buying a house in this area,” Woodman said. “(Alexander) and I were even priced out of a trailer community with how bad our financial situation was a few short years ago, when he was a full time office assistant and music instructor and I worked a part-time minimum wage food service job because it was all I could get at the time.”
The US housing market has been notoriously tough for years, with rents rising faster than incomes and home prices recently soaring to a record high as mortgage rates remain painfully elevated. First-time buyers often receive financial assistance from family to purchase a home, according to a realtor.com survey.
Many parents also help pay for higher education. Research shows that’s simply not the case for most transgender and non-binary people. Merriss said they dream of attending college but have put that on hold to work full time.
Disrespect while on the job is par for the course
Sarah Elizabeth Isbell, 62, began to transition from male to female in 2000, eventually getting gender reassignment surgery in 2008. Isbell currently works in an administrative support role at a nonprofit organization, but she holds a law degree from the University of Oklahoma.
Isbell said she worked at a civil rights law firm in the late 2000s, after she already began to transition, but got fired shortly after a humiliating incident at the workplace.
“I showed up to work one day wearing sandals with my toes painted red and I got ridiculed by the boss, a female boss, in front of the whole office at lunch,” Isbell said. “She said ‘Would you go to court that way?’ and when I said that I don’t see an issue… She just let into me relentlessly about how men can’t dress like that.”
“That was really mortifying,” she added. Isbell said she has struggled to find another job as a lawyer.
“I did civil rights law. But after my transition, even my civll rights lawyer friends didn’t want to hire me. I kept being told that juries and clients with cases in front of juries won’t accept a transgender trial lawyer,” she said.
in 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark civil rights case that employers are prohibited from discriminating against LGBTQ employees. The case before the nation’s highest court, Bostock v. Clayton County, was a consolidation of three similar cases around the country. One of them was brought by Aimee Stephens, who came out as a transgender woman in 2013 while working as a funeral director in a suburb near Detroit. She informed her employer in a letter that she would be coming in dressed as a woman and was fired shortly after, which led to Stephens’ lawsuit. Stephens passed away a month before the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Trans folks have been protected (at the workplace) under federal law for four years now, but it’s not clear how well that’s working,” Michael Martell, an economics professor at Bard College, told CNN. “Trans people face stigma throughout their lives, so it’s certainly fair to say that labor market discrimination is a contributing factor to their disadvantages in life.”
The early report of the US Transgender Survey showed that 11% of respondents said they had been fired, forced to resign or been laid off because of their gender identity or expression.
And transgender people say they still deal with disrespect while on the job. A common issue for transgender people is being misgendered, or referred to with terms that don’t reflect their chosen gender identity, which is sometimes done by accident and other times purposefully. Merriss, Woodman and Isbell all said they’ve been misgendered at the workplace.
A wave of anti-transgender bills across states
A historic wave of bills in state legislatures across the nation aims to ban access to gender-affirming health care for transgender youth and regulate curricula in public schools, including discussions on gender identity.
Last year, there were at least 510 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced by lawmakers in various states, most of them controlled by Republicans, according to American Civil Liberties Union data. That set a record and was nearly three times the number of similar bills introduced in 2022. More than two-thirds of the 167 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced last year related to health care were aimed at blocking trans minors from getting gender-affirming care.
According to Trans Legislation Tracker, 40 anti-trans state bills have so far been signed into law this year, in addition to eight that have been passed by lawmakers but haven’t been approved or vetoed by a governor yet.
Despite the economic struggles and hostile political landscape across the country, researchers and transgender people say that being your authentic self is invaluable. An overwhelming 94% of respondents in the latest US Transgender Survey said they “reported that they were either ‘a lot more satisfied’ or ‘a little more satisfied’ with their life” after transitioning genders.
“It’s awful some days, but I would not give up being this way,” Merriss said. “I’ve gotten away from the family toxic environment, and it’s been so helpful seeing celebrities and characters in media being portrayed positively as a trans person.”
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