Why more women live in major East Coast counties while men outnumber them in the West

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 5-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 that 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 ratio was 87.1, according to the survey. An equal ratio of men to women would be 100.

“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 says, 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.