Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/743

Rh

No. of Males No. of Females Excess of Males Females Per Cent. of Males Females

Native

White

Both parents native 17,472,903 16,885,445 587,458 50.85 49.15

One or both parents foreign born 5,781,571 5,722,104 59,467 50.26 49.74

Colored 3,746,276 3,764,404 18,128 49.88 50.12

Foreign Born

White 4,951,858 4,170,009 781,849 54.29 45.71

Colored 115,272 12,408 102,864 90.28 9.72

Total 32,067,880 30,554,370 1,513,510 51.21 48.79

the country. Hence immigration, which the census regards as the sufficient explanation of the disparity of the sexes, is able to account for less than three-fifths of the total, and for the other two-fifths other causes must be sought. The only escape from this conclusion is by assuming that great omissions or errors occurred in the census, and for such an assumption there appears to be no sufficient warrant.

The question then remains: Why is it that the native white population of the United States includes nearly 650,000 more males than females? This question I conceive to be at present unanswerable, but it is one step in advance to show, as has been shown, that the answer usually given is insufficient, and further progress may be secured by an examination of the conditions under which a preponderance of either sex is found to exist in the United States.

As a preponderance of males among the native whites is the general fact it is simpler to ask, where do the females outnumber the males? The following list (Table II.) includes all the states having an excess of females in the native white population.

These states lie along the Atlantic coast from New Hampshire to Georgia. The usual explanation given of the excess of females in this part of the country is that of the census: "The