What’s the ratio of women to men in East Asia?

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We recently looked at the sex ratio in Europe. This time we’re going to take a deep dive into East Asia. This map shows us how many women there are for every 100 men. A number below 100 means there are more men than women, a number over 100 means there are more women than men.

Naturally, there will be more women than men in most places, as women have a higher life expectancy than men.

Tiemenguan in Xinjiang, China and Lienchiang County in Taiwan have 73.8 women for every 100 men. The lowest in East Asia. The rest of the 100 areas in East Asia with the lowest ratio of women to men, are all Chinese. The areas with the largest surplus of men, are mostly concentrated in Xinjiang and Guangdong.

For the areas where there are more women than men, Japan dominates the top. But Hong Kong (119.6) and Macau (114.4) are ahead of Japan and any other area. This is mostly due to the large number of female domestic workers from South East Asia.

For most countries, the number of areas where there are more men and where there are more women, are fairly balanced. However, this is not the case in Japan and China. In Japan, every prefecture has slightly more women than men. In China, it’s almost the opposite. Only 10% of Chinese prefectures have more women than men. All the other one’s have more men than women. Quite often this difference between men and women is quite large. This is the result of China’s One-Child Policy.

Sex ratio of young people

This map covers the whole population. I also wanted to dive a bit deeper into the ratio’s for young adults, as it can show us some more interesting stats. This age group usually moves away to other places in the country to study or work. In general, there are slightly more men born than women. This is a natural thing. As a result, in most areas you will see that there are slightly more men than women.

Huyanghe (53.3) and Tiemenguan (55.1) have by far the lowest ratio of young women to men. Other areas with a low ratio of young women to young men are Lienchiang County in Taiwan and Xinjiang, Hainan and Guangdong in China.

Another country that stands out, is South Korea. When looking at the overall population, nothing notable stands out. But when looking at the younger population, it becomes clear that young Korean women flock to Seoul, as it has more opportunities in terms of education and work. Seoul has the 6th highest ratio of young women to young men (106.5)

Hong Kong (165.3) and Macau (111.2) again have the highest ratio of young women to young men. Especially in Hong Kong the impact of young female domestic workers from South East Asia becomes clear.