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I remember reading somewhere (probably here) that the same effect is shown in areas with heavily skewed male/female ratios in general. That in places with a lot more men than women both men and women converge on wanting a long term relationship, but in places with a lot more women than men - men would typically prefer not having a relationship i.e. more single mothers in NYC than on the west coast.

There was also a subtext idea about women (in general) being competitive and 'slut shaming' as an evolved mechanism to collude with each other and push the sexual availability/access down in order force men to have to invest more time/effort/resources into a relationship. I'll try and see if I can find whatever it was - the idea was cool (if not obvious) and the unintentional collusion part didn't occur to me.

There's probably a lot at play though it's hard to make any real statements about evolved behavior outside of cultural pressure and without a lot of time to look at things.




in places with a lot more men than women both men and women converge on wanting a long term relationship, but in places with a lot more women than men

There's also the narrative that places where men outnumber women, men become increasingly competitive and violent towards women and each other. An example is any blue collar "boom" town like North Dakota's fracking industry.


In china where men outnumber women due to family preference for a male heir, it has resulted in straight men having to compete with each other on an economic status basis to attract women, what happens in north Dakota is not a universal phenomenon.


This is vastly overstated. Historically there are 1.05 male births per 1 female birth without any technical sex selection going on. Which for a population the size of China works out to an extra ~33 million men. Interestingly in the US and globally men of every age but ~10 years old die more frequently than men so older woman significantly out number older men. It's a fairly significant gap which is one of the reasons this chart looks so shocking. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db88_fig4.png

Roughly stated the younger the population the more men you end up with. Generally this is balanced by woman having shorter 'breaks' between relationships until old age when women significantly out number men. See: 1950: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/Fi...

vs: 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/Fi...

It's hard to read, but the gap actually looks smaller for 15 year olds now vs 1950.


China has a ratio of 112:100 men to women at birth due to gender selectivity. It's that women outlive men which brings things into 'balance' if you include all ages.

Never the less, you see increased bride imports from impoverished SEAsian neighbors. There is also great pressure on the males to show how meritorious and deserving they are economically, in 'attracting' a mate. I say attracting in quotes, because it's often more disproportionately economic than romantic attraction.


> Historically 1.05 Men have been born per 1 woman without any technical sex selection going on.

Don't male infants die slightly more, too?


Yes, but you can say the same thing for 2 year olds or 22 year olds. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080324173552.ht... The 1.05:1 ratio applies at birth, and men steadily die faster after that.

That said, in devoloped nations like the US few infants die so the difference is not that large.

Edit: see page 7 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_07.pdf Per 100,000 births of each gender, 99,301 men see 1, vs 99,427 females a gap of 127. By 30 the gap is 1,148 (97,400 vs 98,548)

At 75 it's 62,720:74,464 a gap of -11,744 which is even larger when you consider the population is ~2/3 the size.

And at 100 the absolute gap is only 1,900 (997 : 2897) but there are ~3x as many woman as men.

PS: Edited the line you quoted for clarity.


It has also led to a sharp rise in kidnapping and trafficking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China#Sex_traf...


Do you have a source on that? I haven't heard of any analysis on this front.


If you search "north dakota gender imbalance", you'll get a lot of narratives of it, but I can't point to statistical evidence.

https://www.google.com/#q=north%20dakota%20gender%20imbalanc...


Thanks. Looks like most of the data is anecdotal at the moment but it's something to keep an eye on and see how/if it pans out. For the people involved.. I hope it's a blip and not a trend.




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