On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism

The most-cited estimates of the prevalence of transsexualism are based on counts of gender reassignments in European clinics many years ago. Observing that reassignments have been in a start-up transient , we extend those results by recalculating prevalence from the accumulating incidence data, taking into account birth, reassignment and death rates and then, based on age-distributions of reassignment data, we determine the inherent number of persons who at some point in life will undergo reassignment. From this reanalysis of those early reports, we determine lower-bounds on the prevalence of the underlying condition of transsexualism to be between 1:1000 and 1:2000, using those reports own data. We then present more recent incidence data and alternative methods for estimating the prevalence of transsexualism, all of which indicate that the lower bound on the prevalence of transsexualism is at least 1:500, and possibly higher.