Third of people who identify as LGBT+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher

Te Whanganui a Tara - For the year ended June 2021, 33.9 percent of those who identified as LGBT+ held a bachelor’s qualification or higher, compared with 27.7 percent of those in the non-LGBT+ population, Stats NZ said today.

Much of this difference was explained by the LGBT+ population being more likely to hold a postgraduate qualification, with 19.3 percent doing so, compared with 12.2 percent of those in the non-LGBT+ population.

The proportion of people with a bachelor’s degree was similar between the LGBT+ and non-LGBT+ populations, at 14.6 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively. These rates have been adjusted for age.

Age-adjustment removed the income gap between the reported LGBT+ population and non-LGBT+ population. An income gap remained, however, between the transgender and non-binary populations and the cisgender population, which are people whose reported gender matches their sex assigned at birth. 

For the year ended June 2021, the average annual income (after-tax) was approximately:

$42,700 for the LGBT+ population

$42,600 for the non-LGBT+ population

$42,600 for the cisgender population

$32,200 for the transgender and non-binary populations.

This means that there are factors other than age affecting the transgender and non-binary populations’ income levels.

Of the New Zealand adult population 18 years of age and over, 4.4 percent identified themselves as part of the LGBT+ population. Most of the LGBT+ population were aged 34 years or under (58.3 percent), almost double the rate for the non-LGBT+ population, 29.6 percent.

People who identified as LGBT+ tended to be younger than the non-LGBT+ population. This means details of their life that are linked to age – like education, income, or home ownership – can differ from the non-LGBT+ population because of that age difference.

StatsNz has age-adjusted its statistics to remove those effects and produce a better comparison between these populations, so that users don’t also need to factor in age differences.

In these statistics, the LGBT+ population was defined as those aged 18 years and over who reported a gender that was not male or female, reported a sexual identity that was not heterosexual, also known as straight, or who reported a gender that did not match what was recorded for their sex at birth such as, transgender male or transgender female.

The terms above are defined separately to create statistical outputs but we appreciate that these terms are not used in a mutually exclusive way in the community.

StatsNZ acknowledges that the gender and sexual identity terms used by them in the household economic survey may not have resonated with everyone in the population and thanks those who felt comfortable enough to share their identities with StatsNZ.

Stats NZ has begun introducing gender and sexuality questions to household surveys based on a new standard:

Data standard for gender, sex, and variations of sex characteristics for definitions and guidance on collecting gender, sex, and variations of sex characteristics data, as well as deriving cisgender and transgender population data. Wellbeing statistics: 2021 provides statistics on mental wellbeing and life satisfaction for people who identify as LGBT+.

The 2023 Census is the first to collect gender and sexual identity from everyone in Aotearoa confirms it will be the first to collect gender and sexual identity from everyone in the country, including intersex status.