What percentage of people are left-handed?
10.6%, about 1 in 9, is the best overall estimate. It comes from the largest review of the question: five meta-analyses of 200 studies and 2,396,170 people, published by Papadatou-Pastou and colleagues in Psychological Bulletin in 2020. Leaving out studies of elite athletes gives 10.4%.
The answer depends on the question people were asked. Where the only answers were left and right, 10.2% said left. Where mixed-handed was also an answer, 9.3% were strictly left-handed and another 9.3% mixed-handed. Counting everyone who is not fully right-handed gives 18.1%. Each figure is a separate meta-analysis, so they do not add up.
How many people are left-handed?
Roughly 1 in 10. The largest single count agrees: in a genetic study of 1,766,671 people from UK Biobank, 23andMe and 32 other cohorts, 194,198 said they were left-handed, 11.0%.
In a class of 30 you would expect about three left-handers, and there is a 96.5% chance of at least one. A left-handed child in that class has a 3.9% chance of being the only one. Try any group size with the calculator above; it treats each person as independent, which families and some sports teams are not.
Are men more likely to be left-handed?
Yes. Across every study, 11.6% of men and 9.5% of women were left-handed, and men outnumbered women under all five definitions. The gap is widest among people who are not fully right-handed (19.8% of men, 16.2% of women) and narrowest for strict left-handedness (9.7% and 8.9%).
Left-handedness by ancestry
Studies of people with European ancestry found 11.1% left-handed, against 7.7% for sub-Saharan African and 5.7% for East Asian ancestry. That makes left-handedness about half as common in the East Asian samples. The authors favor cultural explanations over genetic ones, chiefly pressure to switch the writing hand: people whose families come from places with few left-handers, but who grew up in Western countries, tend to match the country they grew up in. Most studies were of European-ancestry groups (184 of 216 datasets with ancestry recorded), so the other two estimates rest on fewer studies.
Is left-handedness becoming more common?
Studies published before 1976 found 7.2% of people left-handed. Every later period found more: 10.7% for 1976–1985, 10.6% for 1986–1995, 11.7% for 1996–2007 and 10.8% for 2008–2019. The authors think the likeliest cause is schools no longer forcing left-handed children to write with their right hand. The genetic study found the same direction: people born more recently were slightly more likely to say they were left-handed.
How rare is being ambidextrous?
Rarer than being left-handed. UK Biobank and 23andMe let people describe themselves as ambidextrous: 7,646 of 462,182 UK Biobank participants (1.7%) and 29,991 of 1,178,877 in 23andMe (2.5%) did, 2.3% of the two together, about 1 in 44.
Ambidexterity, strictly, means equal skill with both hands; mixed-handedness means preferring different hands for different tasks, and studies often use the terms interchangeably. Studies that offered a middle answer found 9.3% mixed-handed, almost as many as strict left-handers.
Why studies disagree
How handedness is measured changes the answer. Asking people which hand they are found 9.2% left-handed, and asking their writing hand 9.3%. The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, the most used questionnaire, asks about ten everyday tasks and found 13.5%, the one clear difference from the writing-hand figure. Watching people use their hands found 15.1%, but from only 15 datasets with a wide range (9.2–21.1%). Pressure to switch hands falls on writing, the authors note, and writing-hand counts sit at the low end: 9.3%, against 11.2% for every other measure combined.
Left-handed athletes
Studies of elite athletes found 14.7% left-handed, against 10.4% for everyone else. The usual explanation is an edge in interactive sports, where opponents rarely practice against left-handers, but the review had only 12 athlete datasets and the gap is not statistically clear (p = .095).
Where the numbers come from
The percentages, their 95% ranges and the splits by sex, ancestry, year and measure are the random-effects estimates in Papadatou-Pastou and colleagues (2020), read from the authors’ accepted manuscript, whose headline figures match the published abstract. The ambidextrous answers and the 1,766,671-person count are from Cuellar-Partida and colleagues (2021). Download every estimate as a CSV from the chart above.
Good questions
What percentage of people are left-handed?
About 10.6%, roughly 1 in 9, is the best overall estimate from a 2020 meta-analysis of 200 studies covering 2,396,170 people. The definition moves it: 9.3% are strictly left-handed where mixed-handed is also an answer, and 18.1% are not fully right-handed.
How many people are left-handed?
Roughly 1 in 10. In a genetic study of 1,766,671 people from UK Biobank, 23andMe and 32 other cohorts, 194,198 said they were left-handed: 11.0%. In a class of 30 you would expect about three.
Are men more likely to be left-handed than women?
Yes. Across all 200 studies, 11.6% of men and 9.5% of women were left-handed, and men outnumbered women under every definition the meta-analysis tested.
How rare is being ambidextrous?
Rarer than being left-handed. Given the choice, 1.7% of 462,182 UK Biobank participants and 2.5% of 1,178,877 23andMe participants described themselves as ambidextrous. Mixed-handedness, using different hands for different tasks, is far more common: 9.3% where studies offered it as an answer.
Is left-handedness becoming more common?
Studies published before 1976 found 7.2% of people left-handed; later studies found 10.6% to 11.7%. The authors think the likeliest cause is schools no longer forcing left-handed children to write with their right hand.
Where is left-handedness most common?
In studies of people with European ancestry, 11.1% were left-handed, against 7.7% with sub-Saharan African and 5.7% with East Asian ancestry. The authors favor cultural explanations, chiefly pressure to write with the right hand.