Draw your own conclusions

[drwex]

(Yes, I'm Posty McPostalot today.)

http://www.phdcomics.com/blog_images/ng_singles.jpg
- a reproduction of a chart from this month's National Geographic that shows a significant gender imbalance in singles across the country. There are, if these data are correct, vastly more single men in California and on the West coast of the US. Likewise, there are a lot more single women in the eastern half of the country. New York is the biggest imbalance, but Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans and Miami also are shown as having lots more single women.

I have no idea what to make of this.

Comments

[xthread.livejournal.com]

That's very, very interesting - in the past, San Francisco itself has been anecdotally reported to have a much higher population of single women, and that the imbalance in the South Bay more than makes up for it (although, oddly enough, it seems that surprisingly few men are willing to make the trek north in pursuit of the fair sex).

[coraline]

how odd. the data look almost too clean to be true.

given how women are supposed to hate the cold, the results seem odd :)

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-Some of the single-women blobs in Florida are probably retirees who have outlived their husbands.

-The rest of the data is baffling (but reassuring) at first glance.

[entrochan.livejournal.com]

Speak for yourself about the whole reassuring bit! "Frightening" is more what came to my mind. Although not surprising we'd disagree on that matter.

[sykotropic.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I always heard that DC was "worse" than NYC in terms of number of single women per single man.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Hm, I couldn't spot what article it was from on the site; do you know if there is a breakdown by age bracket?

[drwex]

I do not. I also searched the site and couldn't find the article that contains that graph. The original link is clearly a scanned image from the print magazine.

My sense is that "single" is a census category and thus distinct from "divorced", "separated", or "widowed." But it could well be combining all of those.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Please see my most recent LJ post; it has information that you might want.

http://chienne-folle.livejournal.com/28569.html

[cabell.livejournal.com]

The real question here is how the data were collected, and how the researchers defined "single." If by single they mean "not married," these results could be more about where gay men and women live than anything else.

There's also the question of overall sex population. One assumes that more single women probably means more women overall (especially if single = not married in the data). So then the question is, why do all these women live in place A and not place B?

[drwex]

Yes, see my comment to marmota above. I had hoped that one of my friends was a subscriber to the paper copy and could find the original. It does not appear to be online.

then the question is, why do all these women live in place A and not place B?

Yes, if the total number of women is correlated with the number of single women that's quite a gender shift.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised at all. My personal experience, having lived in several of the places on that map, reflect this.

[drwex]

Do you have access to a paper copy of the magazine that the article appears in?