Sex Ratio and Marital Status Among Negroes

Abstract

D IFFERENCES in the marital status of persons in different areas and communities may be due to differences in the ratio of marriageable men to women. Although in simple societies such institutions as polygyny and polyandry may have their roots in tribal sex disequilibrium,' the effect of the latter condition is hardly observed in our more complex organization. William F. Ogburn has shown, however, that in cities where the sexes are unequal in number, a sort of competition develops which is similar to that of the open market. The proportion of either sex married in the community will depend upon the availability of marriageable members of the other sex; but the excess of one sex over the other affects differently the proportion of males and females who will be married. Men are less dependent on the supply of women in marrying than women are on the supply of men.2 But this conclusion has significant racial and urban-rural modifications. We shall consider here some of the racial differences. The racial sex ratio varies considerably in the different regional divisions of the United States. In the Mountain division, among Negroes, there are I23 men to i00 women (0930); while in the South Atlantic, there are approximately 93 men to i00 women. Such differences in sex ratios are similarly significant among urban and rural areas. Although a comparison of the sex ratio and marriage in the divisions may suggest the nature of the dependence of marriage upon the availability of the sexes, the size of these units is so great as to reduce considerably the precision of deductions. Ordinarily, men and women meet each other not in divisions or even in states, but in cities or rural counties.3 In cities, as the number of males to ioo females increases, the percentage of all persons is years of age and over who are married also increases; but the advance in marriage is greater for Negroes than for native white of native parentage persons. In the case of Negroes, the straight line of average relationship (for sex ratios 6o to I34 and for 220 cities) has a slope of