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In 2000, 50.9 percent of the US population was female, and 49.1 percent was male. That's 143 million females and 138 million males, or about 96 men for every 100 women.
However, the ratio of men to women varied significantly by age group. There were about 105 males for every 100 females under 25 in 2000, reflecting the fact that more boys than girls are born every year and that boys continue to outnumber girls through early childhood and young adulthood. However, the male-female ratio declines as people age. For men and women aged 25 to 54, the number of men for each 100 women in 2000 was 99. Among older adults, the male-female ratio continued to fall rapidly, as women increasingly outnumbered men. For people 55 to 64, the male-female ratio was 92 to 100, but for those 85 and over, there were only 41 men for every 100 women.
These male/female ratios reflect a new trend in the last twenty years, however. During the twentieth century, the male-female ratio in the U.S. has fluctuated significantly. From 1900 to 1940 there were more males. Beginning in 1950, there were increasingly more females due to reduced female mortality rates. This trend reversed between 1980 and 1990 as male death rates declined faster than female rates and as more men immigrated to the U.S. than women did. The gap between the number of women and men in older age groups continued to narrow in 2000, reflecting a further increase in men's life spans in comparison to women's.
Geographically, 2000 saw the same patterns for male-female ratios as 1990. In 2000, there were more females than males living in the Northeast, with 93.5 men per 100 women. Rhode Island had the lowest state ratio with 92.5; the District of Columbia was even lower at only 89 men per 100 women. The West overall had the highest male-female ratio at 99.6, approaching a near balance between the sexes. Alaska led the states with the highest male-female ratio at 107. The Midwest had a male-female ratio of 96.1, and the South's male-female ratio was 95.9.
In 2002, slightly more than one-half of all people 15 and over were married and living with their spouse, with men slightly more likely than women to be married (54 percent vs 51 percent). Overall, men were also more likely than women never to have been married (32 and 25 percent, respectively). Women were more likely than men to be divorced or separated (13 percent compared with 10 percent for men), and much more likely to be widowed (10 percent compared with 3 percent).
Data from the National Center for Health Statistics indicate that fertility rates have fluctuated sharply since the peak of the Baby Boom in the late 1950s, when women were having children at a rate of more than 3.5 births per woman. By the mid-1970s, the total fertility rate fell by one-half to about 1.8 births per woman. During the past decade, fertility rates have fluctuated between 2.0 and 2.1 births per woman, a rate below the level required for the natural replacement of the population (about 2.1 births per woman). Overall, 44 percent of women in the childbearing ages were childless in 2002. Among women 40 to 44 years old (who were nearing the completion of their childbearing years), 18 percent were childless, almost twice as high as among women who were the same age in 1976 (10 percent). This shift in average number of children born by age 44 reflects the decline in families with four or more children, from 36 percent to 10 percent, and the corresponding increase in families with one or two children from 31 percent to 53 percent.
Women have made gains in both high school and postsecondary educational attainment. In 2003, for the second year in a row, women had a higher rate of high school completion (85 percent) than men (84 percent). The 2002 difference was the first statistically significant one between the sexes since 1989.
Over the last decade, college attainment has increased for both men and women, but women appear to be making greater strides. Women experienced an increase of nearly 7 percentage points in the proportion with a bachelor's degree in the past decade, reaching 26 percent, while men experienced an increase of about 4 percentage points, reaching 29 percent. For the population 25 to 29 years in 2003, educational attainment levels of women exceeded those of men—88 percent of young women and 85 percent of young men had completed high school, while at the college level, the proportions were 31 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
Differences still exist in the jobs held by men and women. Despite the movement into nontraditional occupations, men and women still showed differences in the types of jobs they held in 2000. For example, 36.7 percent of women but only 17.9 percent of men worked in sales and office occupations. The proportions of men and women were also substantially different in construction, extraction, and maintenance occupations where 17.1 percent of men and only 0.7 percent of women were employed.
Of the 80.5 million men aged 15 and over who worked in 2002, 73.0 percent worked full-time, year-round, unchanged from 2001. Of the 71.5 million women in the same age group who worked in 2002, 58.6 percent worked full-time, year-round—also unchanged from 2001.
Between 2001 and 2002, the real median earnings of men who worked full-time, year-round increased by 1.4 percent, to $39,429. The real earnings of women with similar work experience increased by 1.8 percent to $30,203. In 2002, the female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.77, not statistically different from the all-time high of 0.76 reached in 2001.
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