Why does Mississippi have the lowest male/female ratio of any state in the USA? (Jackson: appointed, how much)

[tennreb]

Even if you look at the ratio of male to female college students, you will notice that Mississippi has a significantly higher female enrollment.

[usm2009]

about the military bases in Mississippi, Camp Shelby is located in Hattiesburg and is noted nationally as the number 1 training facility for the army. A high percentage of the soldiers in Iraq have been training in Hattiesburg.

[Granz]

There are many Military facilities in MS including Keesler Air Force Base.

[TimtheGuy]

It may also have to do with the life expectancy of black males which is much lower than the rest of the population.

[dal2aus]

There aren't enough good jobs in Mississippi in high-paying, male-dominated careers. There aren't enough major metropolitan areas to support job development. We don't have a strong financial services center like NY, Illinois, and California. There isn't a large high-tech industry like California, Texas, Washington, Oregon, or Massachusetts. The primary employer of men in the state seems to be the manufacturing sector, which is dwindling. Also, we don't have a lot of corporations headquartered here. If a man has ambitions of moving up the corporate ladder, he's going to have to be where the bigwigs are at headquarters.

Female-dominated jobs, tend to be lower-paid. Those career fields, like education, healthcare and consumer services, are in great abundance here.

We still live in a traditional society where men are expected to be the primary breadwinner for themselves & their families. A truly ambitious man who wants the typical "American Dream" of financial success is going to be easily lured away by the abundance of opportunities larger and more prosperous states can offer.

[brickpatio]

I googled domestic migration numbers over the past eight years in those states mentioned in the last post, i.e. net change in how many American citizens moved in or moved out of state during that period, which generally reflects the health of their job markets:

California - negative 1.3 million people
Massachusetts - negative 300,000
Illinois - negative 600,000
Mississippi - negative 27,000, including 16,000 apparently after Katrina, so basically break even

And current unemployment rates:

California - 12%
Illinois - 10.5%
Oregon - 12%
Massachusetts - 9%
Mississippi - 9.7%

By comparison Mississippi fares pretty well, against states that are virtually 100% urbanized. The real success story though is Texas, which had domestic migration of 700,000 into the state. Current unemployment rate is 8%, which is below the national average.

[poptones]

Again - unemployment numbers are meaningless in discussions like this because "unemployed" only means someone who has recently worked and is still looking. Once you are "unemployed" for months or years you're no longer even counted... and MS has a LOT of people who simply don't work.

[brickpatio]

You make a good point about % of population that actually works. I did some research comparing "employed" numbers by state to total population and found you are correct to a point. In Mississppi it appears that about 40% of the population works versus about 44% in California, as a point of comparison. Mississippi does have a couple of percentage points more people below the age of 18 so that difference between states' working age population is offset down to about a 2% point difference.

I did find however some other interesting data. According the data from the Administration for Children and Families website, Mississippi has 23,000 people receive TANF (temporary assistance for needy families) versus nearly 1.3 million in California and 92,000 in Massachusetts.

[poptones]

Those are older numbers, but even that means little in comparison to the fact there are more people in los angeles than in the entire state of MS. And that's in just THE CITY of LA, not the greater metro area that most folks think of as LA. There's like three times as many people just in tiny West Hollywood than in the entire city of Jackson!

One other very important factor: this is, again, like comparing unemployment numbers. TANF comes with a lifetime cap and it has little explicitly to do with providing health care to kids. There are PLENTY fo families in this state that do not qualify for "welfare" - parents who work (most likely for cash, at least a large part of the time) but are still too poor to feed, clothe, and provide health insurance for their kids - and who get some form of govt aid.

BTW.. the only one of those states you mentioned above that is even close to "100% urbanized" is Mass. I've lived in upstate NY, California and Illinois so I can tell you from experience there's LOTS of non-urban population there. Mass consumes (and produces) more ice cream per capita than most any other state; NY and California produce huge amounts of dairy products, and Illinois has so much corn it's like one giant basket of jiffy-pop.

[brickpatio]

In the 2000 census, MA was 91% urban and CA 94%. MS was listed as 48% urban. Urban areas almost always have better job markets, so to be so heavily urbanized and still have a relatively poor job market is notable. And vice versa, to be heavily rural and have an overall moderate job market is also notable. And to have 3 to 50 times more people on TANF and to have only 2 to 10 times the population means those larger, urbanized states a lot of people on TANF. They're very nice states, but they have their problems too.