Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
MAP OF THE DAY: HOT, SEXY SINGLES.
Folks might remember this rather startling map that criss-crossed the internet a few months ago. Using Census Survey data, it purported to show the imbalance in singles of both genders across the country. The East Coast, it turned out, was full of lonesome ladies. The West Coast was packed with unhappy bachelors. Folks had some methodological questions, but most read the map and moved on, or read the map and moved to a city with more hot, hot, singles action.
But Great American Jonathan Soma decided to dig into the numbers and make a more manipulable map. And the main variable he let you manipulate was age. The original map counted all singles between the ages of 20 and 64. The new map lets you screw with some sliders for a data range. And the results are fascinating. On the young end of the spectrum, single men outnumber single women just about everywhere. If you hold the ages to 20-34, DC, for instance, has 27 extra single men for every 1,000 people. Shift the slider so it tracks folks from age 45 to 60, and DC has 48 more single women for every 1,000 folks.
The reason for this, basically, is that women marry younger. About 1/3rd of women are married by age 24. Only 1/5th of men are. That creates some imbalance. "Guys," writes Soma. "Like suburban deer, there are too many of you in relation to your prey, and you're destroying each others' game. Older, wiser deer who don't spend their time doing kegstands are snapping up your lady-foliage." But the map is not tracking what happens to those early settlers. Single, in this definition, is counted as never married, divorced, or widowed, so you're missing a lot of folks, particularly in the upper ranges, who are on the dating market but not caught in this data.
Even so, it's a fun way to waste some time. It's also a good reminder that data can be misleading if it's not appropriately sliced. The original map wasn't wrong, exactly, but a 23-year-old guy who read it and packed up for female-heavy New York didn't exactly mean to toss himself into the 45-and-over dating scene. "Singles" wasn't the relevant measure -- "singles like you" were. So see? Which is why I called Soma a Great American: He managed to hide a statistics lesson in a thicket of hot, sexy, singles. Dude deserves a medal.
COMMENTS (17)
how many of those young single men are gay?
Posted by: mercurino | October 23, 2008 9:57 AM
At birth, there are 105 baby boys for every 100 baby girls. Male death rates are higher, and that makes for fewer males in older populations.
Married or not, there are more young males and more older females.
Posted by: Teddy Weverka | October 23, 2008 10:14 AM
A medal for telling us that young women are in scarce supply everywhere?
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | October 23, 2008 10:22 AM
If you hold the ages to 20-34, DC, for instance, has 27 extra single men for every 1,000 people. ... "Singles" wasn't the relevant measure -- "singles like you" were.
The thing is that DC is so culturally stratified that it's hard for me to look at aggregate statistics and thing they bear any relation to my own. My experience in DC has been one in which single women seem to outnumber the men. However, I represent the young white professional demographic.
I presume that within the Salvadoran and Ethiopian immigrant communities, the situation is quite different, as it is if you're an African-American living in Shaw or Anacostia.
Posted by: Tyro | October 23, 2008 10:23 AM
In the 20-34 age range, there is 1 extra single woman per 1000 in Springfield, MA.
Just a public service announcement.
Posted by: DJAnyReason | October 23, 2008 10:31 AM
Sigh... the only city (barely a city, IMO) near me with a small surplus of men is Knoxville, which is undesirable because it's heavily Republican. And full of UT fans. And while my standards have never been impossible or unrealistic, I just can't work up even a faked attraction for men who look like Jim Webb.
Posted by: latts | October 23, 2008 10:39 AM
Ezra, I'm just wondering why you assume it's obvious that seeking singles "like me" has to mean seeking singles "close to my age." Before I was married, I found life a lot more interesting if I didn't limit my dating choices by age. I worry that lurking under the surface of this analysis is the assumption that men shouldn't or wouldn't or couldn't want to date women older than themselves (or that women shouldn't, wouldn't, or couldn't be interested in younger men), while the reverse isn't true. It's hard not to think of this not only as sexist but also as unrealistic.
Posted by: Gary Chartier | October 23, 2008 10:56 AM
Springfield, MA really sticks out. Whats going on there? Any locals know?
Posted by: Nylund | October 23, 2008 11:10 AM
It's interesting, but the analogy is sexist and gross. Women aren't involved in the dating process--they're just passive "prey" (?!) to be feasted upon by male deer. Women aren't even deer in this analogy! Ewww!
I also think this doesn't apply to African Americans. From what I've read, poverty causes higher fatalities in young males, leaving 85 young men for every 100 women.
Posted by: K.A. | October 23, 2008 11:19 AM
"The West Coast was packed with unhappy bachelors."
Amongst the dumb things about that map is that it ignored teh gey.
As a straight resident of the SF Bay Area, between teh gey and the geeks, if you are a straight guy with reasonable standards of hygiene, you're going to do extremely well. Go to the hipster bars, and you'd be surprised at the toads with A+ women.
(Mind you, not everything in a dress in SF has two X chromosomes.)
Posted by: Sock Puppet of the Great Satan | October 23, 2008 12:15 PM
...the assumption that men shouldn't or wouldn't or couldn't want to date women older than themselves
According to math, men predominantly don't. Check out this pdf from the Census Bureau, page 8. Average age at first marriage for men is 24, for women it's 21.8. Throughout the chart, for second marriages and all, women are consistently younger than men when marrying. This shouldn't be the case if everyone is marrying up and down, especially since women live longer, so they have a population distribution that extends further up the chart.
...it's hard for me to look at aggregate statistics and thing they bear any relation to my own
Tyro is right on the money about class and distribution. DC I'm not so sure about, but one of the reasons California is so blue is because of migrant workers.
Posted by: Jonathan Soma | October 23, 2008 12:26 PM
Springfield, MA
Some wikipedia info:
City Population 154,000 (in 2000)
"For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84 males"
"For nearly six decades, Springfield has been slumping economically, due largely to a decline in manufacturing."
Posted by: Anonymous | October 23, 2008 1:18 PM
NY age 25-44: 11 more men per 1000 people.
if all those men were straight, sex and the city would not exist.
Posted by: mercurino | October 23, 2008 2:23 PM
I think the deal with Springfield, MA is that the women's colleges of Smith and Mt Holyoke are in the same Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Posted by: Lauren | October 23, 2008 8:50 PM
This is a stupid analysis.
A more reasonable analysis would be to have separate sliders for men and women.
Then one could look at the population of women 20 - 30 and compare that to the population of men 25 - 35. Assuming that women typically date men older than them (which is the case in my experience).
Posted by: Adam | October 26, 2008 2:08 AM
Before I was married, I found life a lot more interesting if I didn't limit my dating choices by age. I worry that lurking under the surface of this analysis is the assumption that men shouldn't or wouldn't or couldn't want to date women older than themselves or that women shouldn't, wouldn't, or couldn't be interested in younger men, while the reverse isn't true. It's hard not to think of this not only as sexist but also as unrealistic.
Posted by: tower defense | April 24, 2009 11:12 PM
دردشة
Posted by: دردشه | June 15, 2009 3:15 PM