Gender/Sex

Sex, like age, is one of the few topics that have been the subject of every census since 1790. Data on gender is used to implement and evaluate programs like the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Women's Education Equity Act, and the Job Training Partnership Act and, in conjunction with age and race data, are important to the Older Americans Act, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In the 2010 census, the population of the United States was 308,745,538, a 9.7 percent increase over the 2000 census, making it the third most populous country in the world. Unlike previous modern censuses, no long form was used, having been phased out in favor of the American Community Survey. The short form distributed to all households asked 10 questions, one of which was the sex of each person in the household. The number of men increased by 9.9 percent from 2000 to 2010, compared to the 9.5 percent increase of the previous decade. Women outnumbered men by 5.18 million, compared to 5.3 million in 2000, a male-female ratio of 96.7.

Although women continue to enjoy a longer average life span than men, the gap narrowed in the 2010 census, in which the ratio of men to women increased the most in the 65 and over age group. The recent growth in the male population is the first in the American male population since 1910, when women's life expectancies began to increase due to medical advances, especially those reducing the number of women who died giving birth.

Of the total population, 49.2 percent were male, 50.8 percent female. The median age of men was 35.8 years, while the median age of women was 38.5 years. The sex ratio at birth is about 105 males to 100 females, which has dampened the effect on the overall sex ratio of women's comparatively longer life spans. Historically, for the last 100 years there have generally been more men at younger ages, and more women at older ages as the male population experiences faster attrition.

The sex ratio continues to decline with age, reaching 100:100 around the 30s before women overtake men, and ending with a roughly 1:5 ratio of men to women. But the decline is less severe and more gradual than in 2000. In 2000, the age at which women outnumbered men 2:1 was 85. In 1990, it was 83. In 2010, it was 89, not only an increase over the previous census but a sharper increase than between that census and the one before.

The two groups in which females experienced higher growth than males from 2000 to 2010 were the Native Hawai'ian and Other Pacific Islander category, in which the male population grew by 25 percent while the female population grew by 25.1 percent, and the Asian American group, in which the male population grew by 32 percent while the female population grew by 33 percent.

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