How many people in Australia identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or an alternative sexual minority orientation? The question is difficult to answer because there are so few relevant statistics available. Despite this paucity of data, the value of population statistics by sexual identity has been increasingly recognised in recent years. They would be useful for informing the development of policies and programs to address challenges faced by sexual minority populations, measuring health and wellbeing, estimating the demand for specific goods and services, and also providing visibility to LGBTQ communities through statistics. The aim of this paper is to describe how population estimates and projections were produced for Australia’s sexual minority population. Robust survey data on sexual identity were combined with official population estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to estimate the adult sexual minority population. Our estimates put it at about 650,000 in 2016 (or 3½% of the population). A new population projection model was developed to project the population out to 2041 according to several scenarios. Although there is considerable uncertainty about its future demographic development, all scenarios indicate huge growth and ageing of the sexual minority population.

Tom Wilson is Principal Research Fellow in the Demography and Ageing Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. He is an applied demographer specialising in population and household projections, migration analysis, very elderly demographic trends, migration analysis, and LGBTQ demography. Tom is the Editor of the open-access journal Australian Population Studies.