Tracing the Ups and Downs Of the Male-Female Ratio

Men are still outnumbered by women in the U.S., but they strove manfully to catch up during the 1990s. According to a Census Bureau report, the male population grew by 13.9 percent during that decade, while the female population rose 12.5 percent. That’s because death rates declined more for men than for women, while immigration yielded more men than women. By 2000, the U.S. had a male-female ratio of 96.3—the number of men times 100 divided by the number of women.