North Dakota Leads The Nation In Dudes UPDATE: Not So Much

Update: Whoops, looks like the Washington Post got the numbers wrong. Alaska has the highest percentage of men while North Dakota comes in second place.

According to the Washington Post, in most of America women outnumber men. Except upper central to northwest part of the country. In those states there tends to be more men then women (except in Washington where there’s an exact balance of the genders).

And among those states with more men than women, North Dakota leads the way. Our state has the largest percent age of men in the nation according to 2013 data from the Census Bureau.

North Dakota is at 51.1 percent male. Rhode Island, on the other end of the spectrum, is 51.6 percent female. I suspect North Dakota is leading the nation in percentage of males thanks to the oil boom which has seen a male-dominated industry attract a lot of male workers to the state.

This might just be nothing more than a bit of trivia, except for the fact that these demographics can mean a lot for other statistics. Like crime.

The oil boom hasn’t just made North Dakota more male. It’s made North dakota quite a bit younger as well. The state saw its median age drop the fastest in the nation in 2013.

With North Dakota getting younger, and more male,  is it any wonder that crime rates here have been increasing? Especially given the strong correlation between age and crime documented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics?

Also: “Males committed the vast majority of homicides in the United States [from 1980 to 2008], representing 90% of the total number of offenders.”

Nobody in North Dakota likes the state’s rising crime rates, and the blame for the crime is often aimed at the oil industry. But given these correlations between age, gender and crime it’s hard to imagine how North Dakota could have gotten younger and more populous – two things many in the state wished for back when we had an aging, declining population – without getting more crime.