The unmarried male/female ratio project

The ratio of unmarried men to women is of interest to everyone who’s single and looking, and even those who are married but are interested in sociology and demographics, however the resources available on the web (such as the Richard Florida map) are very poor. People make the mistake of grouping everyone together, which results in useless data.

To do these calculations, I will use the American Community Survey 2006 data, available for free (thanks ot the University of Minnesota) at the IPUMS-USA website. I will then use the US Census PUMA maps to pull interesting geographic areas out of the data. The ACS only surveys 1% of the population, thus the results are subject to sample error.

I believe that a good demographic to examine is non-Hispanic white unmarried people between the ages of 25-40. Because interracial marriage is relatively rare, most single people are only interested in how many single people of the opposite sex there are from their own race.

The age range 25-40 captures the post-college years. People in this age range aren’t affected by the fact that there’s a big surplus of widowed female octogenarians.

“Unmarried” includes the following census categories: divorced, widowed, never married. The following categories are excluded: married spouse present, married spouse absent, separated.

Now, I introduced this topic with some USA-wide charts so that you can see the big picture. You will notice that even in the pre-marriage years, there is a surplus of males. This is because more boy babies are born than girl babies.

In this introductory post, I also include separate charts for blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.

Black men have a much more favorable male/female ratio than men of other races. I’m not sure why. Possibly became blacks have a more even birth ratio, because black men die early, because black men are marrying white women, or because black men are being undercounted by the census.

Hispanic men face the worst ratio. This is probably due to the disproportionate number of male illegal immigrants.

In future posts, I will examine the geographic data.

Non-Hispanic White
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		sex
		1 Male	2 Female	ROW TOTAL
age	1: 0-17	51.4 21,705,175	48.6 20,493,062	100.0 42,198,237
	2: 18-20	52.1 4,048,871	47.9 3,719,306	100.0 7,768,177
	3: 21-24	54.1 4,412,950	45.9 3,747,934	100.0 8,160,884
	4: 25-28	55.4 3,073,705	44.6 2,472,222	100.0 5,545,927
	5: 29-32	56.1 2,014,546	43.9 1,574,294	100.0 3,588,840
	6: 33-36	55.0 1,836,492	45.0 1,504,618	100.0 3,341,110
	7: 37-40	53.7 1,789,844	46.3 1,544,026	100.0 3,333,870
	8: 41-45	51.9 2,476,961	48.1 2,296,258	100.0 4,773,219
	9: 45-50	50.4 2,423,458	49.6 2,389,582	100.0 4,813,040
	10: 51-60	45.3 3,627,512	54.7 4,374,329	100.0 8,001,841
	11: 61-70	35.2 1,878,822	64.8 3,451,610	100.0 5,330,432
	12: 71-80	25.7 1,316,544	74.3 3,810,573	100.0 5,127,117
	13: 81-90	21.0 848,826	79.0 3,194,044	100.0 4,042,870
	14: 91-99	17.3 210,036	82.7 1,001,393	100.0 1,211,429
	COL TOTAL	48.2 51,663,742	51.8 55,573,251	100.0 107,236,993

Non-Hispanic Black
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		sex
		1 Male	2 Female	ROW TOTAL
age	1: 0-17	50.9 5,437,647	49.1 5,238,751	100.0 10,676,398
	2: 18-20	51.5 969,045	48.5 911,264	100.0 1,880,309
	3: 21-24	50.1 1,003,621	49.9 998,191	100.0 2,001,812
	4: 25-28	48.8 800,664	51.2 839,181	100.0 1,639,845
	5: 29-32	46.7 563,052	53.3 642,645	100.0 1,205,697
	6: 33-36	44.2 527,441	55.8 665,285	100.0 1,192,726
	7: 37-40	44.0 473,105	56.0 602,729	100.0 1,075,834
	8: 41-45	42.7 592,415	57.3 793,677	100.0 1,386,092
	9: 45-50	42.1 538,845	57.9 741,877	100.0 1,280,722
	10: 51-60	39.0 724,780	61.0 1,135,234	100.0 1,860,014
	11: 61-70	31.0 327,916	69.0 730,938	100.0 1,058,854
	12: 71-80	26.0 194,815	74.0 555,001	100.0 749,816
	13: 81-90	21.3 84,623	78.7 313,231	100.0 397,854
	14: 91-99	15.9 20,035	84.1 105,652	100.0 125,687
	COL TOTAL	46.2 12,258,004	53.8 14,273,656	100.0 26,531,660

Non-Hispanic Asian
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		sex
		1 Male	2 Female	ROW TOTAL
age	1: 0-17	50.8 1,498,088	49.2 1,452,071	100.0 2,950,159
	2: 18-20	50.8 282,141	49.2 273,757	100.0 555,898
	3: 21-24	54.2 356,068	45.8 301,187	100.0 657,255
	4: 25-28	56.7 303,133	43.3 231,079	100.0 534,212
	5: 29-32	58.6 214,206	41.4 151,278	100.0 365,484
	6: 33-36	56.1 141,586	43.9 110,804	100.0 252,390
	7: 37-40	51.2 102,708	48.8 98,004	100.0 200,712
	8: 41-45	46.2 92,933	53.8 108,365	100.0 201,298
	9: 45-50	40.7 72,473	59.3 105,375	100.0 177,848
	10: 51-60	33.4 98,467	66.6 196,537	100.0 295,004
	11: 61-70	24.5 51,214	75.5 157,597	100.0 208,811
	12: 71-80	18.9 34,939	81.1 149,918	100.0 184,857
	13: 81-90	19.1 20,058	80.9 85,213	100.0 105,271
	14: 91-99	17.6 5,017	82.4 23,425	100.0 28,442
	COL TOTAL	48.7 3,273,031	51.3 3,444,610	100.0 6,717,641

Hispanic
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		sex
		1 Male	2 Female	ROW TOTAL
age	1: 0-17	51.0 7,611,162	49.0 7,323,206	100.0 14,934,368
	2: 18-20	55.0 1,141,886	45.0 935,950	100.0 2,077,836
	3: 21-24	59.0 1,323,967	41.0 918,788	100.0 2,242,755
	4: 25-28	61.2 1,104,241	38.8 698,783	100.0 1,803,024
	5: 29-32	60.6 773,527	39.4 502,776	100.0 1,276,303
	6: 33-36	56.2 551,421	43.8 429,351	100.0 980,772
	7: 37-40	53.3 443,220	46.7 388,156	100.0 831,376
	8: 41-45	49.7 425,124	50.3 430,887	100.0 856,011
	9: 45-50	45.0 321,689	55.0 392,526	100.0 714,215
	10: 51-60	42.0 419,489	58.0 578,321	100.0 997,810
	11: 61-70	30.0 174,577	70.0 406,487	100.0 581,064
	12: 71-80	25.4 120,128	74.6 351,939	100.0 472,067
	13: 81-90	21.9 51,779	78.1 184,560	100.0 236,339
	14: 91-99	15.9 9,728	84.1 51,287	100.0 61,015
	COL TOTAL	51.6 14,471,938	48.4 13,593,017	100.0 28,064,955

Comments

[David Alexander]

Black men have a much more favorable male/female ratio than men of other races. I’m not sure why. Possibly became blacks have a more even birth ratio, because black men die early, because black men are marrying white women, or because black men are being undercounted by the census.

Allegedly, from what I've read, Black women tend to give birth to more females, and infant deaths tend to kill off infant males more than females. Mind you, I have no way of validating such information. Supposedly, the heavily skewed male-female ratio are also able to explain why black women are willing to put up with the poor habits of their boyfriends due to the "shortage" of black men.

Black men who have children with white women tend to have children who are counted as black, so I don't think it would have an effect on the ratios at birth. Death from the violence that's common in inner city neighbourhoods is certainly what kills off the first wave of black men between 18-25, while poor health kills off the older black men.

In regards to the demographics, it is possible that the census maybe undercounting black men. I also wonder if immigration from the Caribbean has biased the counts as well. From my vantage point, it seems as if more Caribbean women immigrated to the US than men did, but I've never taken the time to determine if this hypothesis was correct.

BTW, for sampling purposes, my grandmother has 5 daughters and no sons, 9 grandchildren of which 4 are girls and 5 are boys, and 5 great-grandchildren, of which only two are boys.

[chezjake]

I understand your color coding for all the charts except the Non-Hispanic Black chart. In the others, it's clearly that the majority is in red and the minority blue. That's not consistent for the Non-Hispanic Black chart, and nothing explains the lighter shades for the 29-32 age group.

[keil]

chez, the colors show deviation from the mean listed at the bottom of the charts. One color is positive, the other negative. And the lighter or darker shades show how close or far from the mean they are.