You’ve asked to see it again. So…… it’s back! 
Check out the Singles Map….
The Midwest almost serves as the dividing line…. a great number of single women to the east and a surplus of single men to the west.
New York, DC, Chicago and Miami with the greatest surplus of women, and LA, San Fran, Seattle, Phoenix, and Vegas.
Why is this? Any ideas?
Check our discussion last time around.
posted by: Steven
July 17th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I’ll simply re-post my comment from the original discussion – hopefully that can re-start the conversation:
Hmmm – random thought. Is this trend reflected in the two hit HBO shows, “Sex and the City” and “Entourage”? I don’t know much about the supposed origins of the women in “Sex and the City”, (except that the Charlotte character is from blue-blood Connecticut), but it takes place at the hub of the #1 female surplus region (New York). Regardless, they all seem to be from East Coast-ish locations to begin with. Perhaps their frustrations are a reflection of the large single female surplus.
“Entourage”, on the other hand, is explicitly about young men from Queens, NY migrating to Hollywood, the hub of the #1 male surplus region (LA), and I believe is based on Boston native’s Mark Wahlberg’s experience.
I agree that the west still holds a “Gold Rush” mentality for young men, and on top of the “Hot Babe” and other beach/surfer dude-oriented aspect of it all, you have the whole Silicon Valley Type-A nerd culture to draw young men from the East. I think it’s also part of the West being the least rooted part of the nation. A young single male who wants to totally throw off his familial and social bonds for more cosmic pursuits would probably like the West better.
I’m not so sure what Texas holds for these young men, but it could be a combination of big oil in Houston, big funkiness in Austin, and just plain big money in Dallas. San Antonio seems to not joined this club yet.
I’m surprised the Southeast is such a female-surplus region, but I supposed their young men migrate West, too. Maybe it’s the South’s sometimes exessive “rootedness” (and honestly not all that different from other areas east of the Mississippi) that pushes the most ambitious young men to flee west (and perhaps not even Atlanta appeals to them). The exceptions seem to be Myrtle Beach, SC and inexplicably Hickory, NC.
And what accounts for the surplus single men in Southwest Florida and on Florida’s East Coast between Jacksonville and Miami? Real estate and developer folks? Does Myrtle Beach fall in that category?
I’m also reminded of my cousin sister and my best friend, who are married to each other. My cousin ideally would want to live in Manhattan. My best friend would ideally want to live in a dry, cool western location (he loved Flagstaff, AZ, for example). Is there maybe something about females that prefers humidity? When my wife and I have traveled to San Diego, Arizona, or Vegas, I’ve loved the climate, and while she loved it in an abstract sense, she somehow always got sick.
Also, I’ve often heard of men on either coast, but probably particularly the West Coast, looking back east, especially the midwest, to settle down with a nice girl-next-door and start a family. Especially if that’s where they came from.
July 17th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Another thought I had:
In terms of natural amenities, does the relatively dry, rugged nature of the West lure more single ambitious men? As opposed to the relatively more humid, flatter East (sorry, the Appalachians can’t hold a candle to the Rockies). While I’m sure there are many women into “rugged” and “extreme” sports like mountain biking, it seems men on average would be more attracted to those sports, and the West seems to have a lot more venues for that type of recreational activity.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
The chart would be more useful if the size of the dots represented the surplus as a percentage of population, instead of the absolute numbers.
Hmm. For that matter, how about a heatmap?
July 30th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
>>>Why is this? Any ideas?
Hi Richard – My first guess would be that we are looking at the historical echo of the way gender intersected with economy during our nation’s formative years.
With its ties across the Atlantic, the East Coast was originally the most, in fact the only, populated region. When the nation began to expand, it was the young expendable men that moved. When they said “Go west young man, go west,” they meant men.
This map shows what has got to be an old geographical feature of our nation’s demographics. I cannot conclude that somehow more males are being born on the West Coast.
Despite women’s liberation, it’s probably more or less recapitulated in contemporary culture, with more men than women moving west still, the latter inclined to stay closer to family, wherever that may be.