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Sex ratios, or male to female ratios, are important and one of the most basic demographic parameters. Sex ratios not only provide information about how many males and females there are in a population but also shows the potential for breeding and growth in a population. It is typically expressed as the number of males compared to the number of females. Sex ratio both affects and is affected by birth, death, immigration, and emigration rates. The preference for sons greatly affects the sex ratio in some Asian and North African countries. For countries dealing with the issues of rapid population growth, gender imbalance could help slow birth rates. The “ideal” sex ratio is different for each population, and may not be a static number. Populations with significantly higher female populations have the potential for a substantially higher birth rate than male-dominant populations.
Male to female ratios can be expressed as one number, which indicates the number of males per 100 females in a population. The numbers expressed on this page are the male to female ratios from 2018. In the United States, the male to female ratio is about even, but the population trends show that there are more females than males. The U.S. male to female ratio is 97 (97 males for every 100 females). Women outnumber men in all but ten states. Despite the ratio being almost one-to-one, only a little more than half of the female population participated in the labor force in 2018.
State | Sex Ratio |
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Alaska has the highest male to female ratio in the U.S. with 110 men for every 100 women. Alaska is one of ten states that has more men than women. The states with the highest male to female ratios are the only ten states to have more men than women. If continuing the list in descending order, the next state, Washington, has a ratio of 100. This indicates an even split of males and females in the population.
The states with the lowest male to female ratios, in order, are: District of Columbia (90.8), Delaware (93.7), Mississippi (94), Alabama (94.1), Maryland (94.2), Massachusetts (94.4), South Carolina (94.4), New York (94.4), North Carolina (94.8), and Georgia (94.8). The District of Columbia has the lowest male to female ratio of 90.8. The male to female ratio of each state is listed below. Numbers indicate how many men there are per 100 women in the population.