I’ve read an excellent book called Too Many Women the sex ratio question by Marcia Guttentag a few times. I wont get into debating it, though that would be nice. I am just wondering what the sex ratio is in America right now?
Per recent census bureau information it is very close to 50:50, women with the slight edge.
50.8% female
49.2% male
Here is the stats by state: U.S. population: male to female ratio, by state 2020 | Statista
Hm. Thank you. I guess I should’ve been more detailed. The book discusses marriageable aged males and females and what happens socially and such when the ratio is skewed. Like between 20 and 40. Sorry if I didn’t mention that first. But its good to know theres an equal balance.
Go ask China and India how well sex selection favoring boys has worked out for them socially and culturally. Kinda think they’d dispute there are too many women these days.
Yes, that’s China. Thankfully, not here.
In the U.S., among 20-39 year olds, it’s 50.4% male, and 49.6% female (as of the 2010 Census). That’s close enough to a 50/50 balance that we can safely say that, in the U.S., the male/female ratio among “marriageable aged” people isn’t skewed.
The reason that the total U.S. population is close to 51% female (as per @Omar_LIttle’s cite) is that men have a somewhat lower average lifespan then women. When you look at the age bands in my link, you see that, in the U.S., males slightly outnumber females in every age cadre up through 30-34 year olds; after that, women increasingly outnumber men.
This website has interesting info on this topic…
I’ve seen a few articles over the years on this topic. In China, for example, women are getting more picky, desperate males are resorting to mail order brides. Economist mentioned a Vietnamese scam where the bride shows up, they marry in return for a large payment, then she disappears with the money. Possibly to rinse and repeat.
There was an article too about black women in America. Significant numbers of young black males are incarcerated, that black women looking for a black partner have slim pickings - aggravated by the fact that the early 20’s males are most likely to be in jail. Worse yet are the prospects for educated black professional women. One woman mentioned discovering that her boyfriend was cheating, only to be told “I didn’t know this was an exclusive arrangement.” Demand for free males is high enough that a free black male can have multiple relationships.
Another data point that might make sense is that males may have a propensity for younger females as partners - thus diminishing the pool of females for men in their 20’s; it’s not just millionaires or some presidents that snag women decades younger, and sometimes several in series.
A similar article blamed polygamy for ISIS (Daesh). If the top 5% of male middle eastern society can afford the quota of 4 wives, then the bottom 15% will never find a wife. The article suggested that horny 20-year-olds, not religious fanaticism, is what drove young men to join such a fanatical group. Note that one of the features of ISIS was that they simply kidnapped “eligible” females from the lands they conquered and awarded them to their fighters. Forget about 75 virgins in Paradise, these guys were in it for one live female on earth.
Anecdote time.
I’m white, married, 60+, but in good shape with a youthful attitude. My dentist’s technical assistant / nurse person is black, not quite 40, well-spoken, & good looking. Over the years we’ve learned a bit about each other through chit-chat. She’s single, childless, looking for a guy, and deeply frustrated. We were discussing that one day and I said (and meant): “Were I single I’d gladly ask you out. As long as you could deal with having an old fogey for a BF.”
Her instant comment: “I’d gladly take you up on it; you beat the heck out of the garbagemen and ex-cons who respond to my Match profile.”
Ouch! I was at a loss for words at that one. She’s a capable and sweet person and is just one of millions in a similar boat. It paints a vivid and painful picture.
That’s true as far as it goes, but there are localized concentrations of more-males and more-females by both geography and age group. I used to have a really good reference about this that I can’t quite dig up, but here is a cruder one. Play with the sliders, and you’ll see that, say, 18-24 yo’s are over-represented by males, e.g. 129 more men per 1000 in San Jose CA. For 50-59 yos, women over-represent men by 72 per 1000 in San Jose CA. A small difference until for the 50-59’s you realized the vast majority of that group are in relationships, so a single in that group may have quite a lot of trouble finding a partner.
I’ll see if I can dig up my older reference which is much easier to play with by region and age group.
Wow, check out the Gulf States’ profiles on that one. Qatar, Oman, UAE … the gender ratios are absolutely mental.
I presume it’s all the guest-workers
Interesting and I agree - guest workers. But, with an imbalance like that, there must be a shortage of males somewhere, but where?
Lots from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, I believe. None of the gulf states are all that big, and India in particular could be down a few hundred thousand without really noticing much (not to mention … they’re one of the major places that has too many men)
Excellent point. I’d hypothesize that 18-24 men are so over-represented in San Jose because of the tech jobs in Silicon Valley (which still tend to skew male). The over-representation of women in 50-59 in that same area is interesting, and one for which an explanation isn’t immediately obvious – at first, I thought of ex-wives of tech execs whose former husbands had moved on to younger “trophy wives,” but I don’t think that can be the entire explanation.
Look again at that age group, 50-59. The whole country (almost) is overweighted with females in that group, e.g. McAllen TX has 372 ‘extra’ women per 1000 males. Definitely not a trophy wife effect, it’s a general one based on age. Simple answer is men dying and women not dying, but perhaps its population movement.
facepalm You’re right, of course, @squeegee. It’s more likely just the effect of there being, generally more women than men in the U.S. once you get past age 40, rather than anything particularly weird about San Jose.
This was what that article stated. Perhaps another point is that women tend to be less willing to marry a lower education, lower income man than vice versa. Plus exactly your point, that as the prospective age gets higher, the number of eligible (single) males or females becomes fewer.
I always tell younger people to enjoy high school and university, where they tend to be surrounded by peers who are single. When they get out into the workforce, the number of single eligible partners is much much lower. Start working in an office with 50 other people, less than a handful will be about the same age, opposite gender, and single unless something is skewing the demographic.
Could be worse. A few decades of socially-driven sex selection has apparently badly skewed the male to female ratio in India and China. One article on China asked where the over 50 million missing girls have gone… in a population of 1.3 billion, that implies 13 men for every 12 women. Once they start marrying, the gap becomes far more obvious.
Yeah. 13 vs. 12 sounds plausible, it’s a 7% overage of men = shortfall of women.
Then half of the people pair off and it’s 7 men for 6 women and the excess males are 14%. That real quickly turns into 12 couples plus 1 man for zero women and an infinite overage of males by percentage. Cue social unrest, crime, etc.
Here’s an interesting US-centric website I learned about from another Dope thread. I cannot speak to the validity of their data or their calcs. But it is thought provoking and not in a good way.
Women in the 50-59 age range who are single are probably divorced and have about zero desire to get into that mess again. The resistance to marriage in women of that age group is pretty heavy–anecdotally, I’m 62 and have a lot of female friends in that range and even those who are in relationships still don’t want the complication of marriage so they just cohabitate. Or just date–thing is, in that age and older gender expectations of male prospective partners make marriage a losing game for the women.