Census: Western U.S. has more men; East has more women

Anyone who has suspected that there are more women than men where they live, or vice versa, will find fodder for their suspicions in new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Whether it refutes or confirms their suspicions likely depends on where they live.

Women outnumber men in the largest urban counties east of the Mississippi River, along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Deep South, while the West skews male, according to data released last week from the 2022 American Community Survey five-year estimates, the most comprehensive source of data on American life. Those numbers were also backed up by age and sex figures from the 2020 census released earlier this year.

There are limitations to what can be concluded from the data. Still, Nancy Averbach, 57, doesn’t find the numbers surprising. She lost her husband eight years ago and has since found it hard to meet a compatible partner.

Across the U.S. in 2022, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 96.6 adult men for every 100 adult women — and in the Atlanta suburb of DeKalb County, where Averbach lives, that number was 87.1, according to the survey.

“It’s really tough to find quality men who share similar values,” Averbach said. There aren’t many singles groups that cater to her age group, she said, and when such groups put on events, they usually attract more women than men.

Her county has a low sex ratio, which means there are more women than men. A high ratio indicates there are more men than women.

The sex ratio numbers don’t reflect sexual preference, gender identity or whether those surveyed are looking for partners. The figures also don’t reflect intersex people, who, historically, have had relatively scant data collected on them.

The ratios vary by geography, in part because of the presence of certain institutions and industries with gender imbalances. In the most populous counties in the West, this is especially discernible. San Diego, for instance, has several male-dominated military bases, which is reflected in the sex ratio. In Austin, San Francisco, Seattle and San Jose, there are plentiful jobs in tech, a sector where men account for around three-quarters of the workforce.

This is in contrast to areas with large numbers of colleges or universities, which typically have more women, according to a Census Bureau report from May.