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.
The Mississippi River seems like an odd choice for the dividing line of East vs West. By what other metric would you consider Saint Louis in the Western half of the country?
Population wise, the Mississippi River is the dividing line. West of the Mississippi the population densely drops very quickly outside of major cities. East of the Mississippi River the population densely is very high, even well beyond major cities.
Had to look it up, and of course there’s a Wikipedia page. I guess the population centroid has been just west of the Mississippi River in Missouri circa 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_center_of_the_United_States_population