Inconsistencies in ACS 2022 5-Year Estimates: A Case Study of BYUI Gender Ratios

Interesting. The Rexburg, ID Micropolitan Area seems to be all of Fremont and Madison counties (https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/2007/reference-maps/id/metro/2007-us39940m-rexburg-id-micropolitan-statistical-area.pdf), so I'm guessing that there are other residents there who are not part of the university.

It might also be worth looking at some of the school enrollment tables (any that start with B14), for example, B14002 actually lists people enrolled in college undergraduate years by sex. One thing to note though is that ACS only captures yes/no on school enrollment, not on any particular institution. So this would also include people who are enrolled in any other institutions who live in the micropolitan area (community colleges, other universities, and could even be online programs).

Right, BYUI's report supports this. Note the higher counts of women enrolled online

Online data make no sense, because online school can have no building but just a website and be registered in some city.

That makes no difference to the ACS. You seem to take issue with the ACS reporting more women than men because it's inconsistent with BYUI enrollment counts. But the ACS is not counting enrollment, either online or in person. 

That makes no difference to the ACS. You seem to take issue with the ACS reporting more women than men because it's inconsistent with BYUI enrollment counts. But the ACS is not counting enrollment, either online or in person. 

This is all based on my personal experience, I observed that when I lived in Rexburg, there were more men than women, so there were some men who couldn't find wives

On the one hand, your experience shouldn't count for nothing, you're on the ground and that gives you insight that can't be gained through a survey. On the other hand, you only know what you know, and unlike you, the ACS data is based on a random sample, which reaches people likely outside of your orbit.
But there's a third hand- The difference between the male and female populations is most stark at 18 and 19 years old, never married. 2,481 male, 8,510 female. That is a very large difference, much larger than for any other age group. That's weird!

Aefcmj, I need to further affirm your suspicions. The discrepancy seems to be centered around the BYUI campus, which in the 2018-2021 data was 5% male.


Even stranger, looking at the 2013-2017 data, it was much more balanced, at 44% male


According to the data, the male population dropped from 541 to 80 over the course of these 5ish years. Of course, I'm looking at block groups and weird things happen in block groups, but clearly it's affecting the data for the whole area.

Male vs. female residence halls?

I pulled up the College enrollment in the Rexberg Micropolitan area and I include it here.  It does show the typical gap between men and women enrolled.  

From a quick look at data on the area, there was a second College in the area that went out of business in 2021, and it may have been partially included in the data since it is 5 year study.  Most generally in College's today one has a large gap between Women and Men, with men not being as likely to enroll or graduate.  BYUI may be different in some ways, since they also have a count of "Returning Missionaries" on their website.

I would suggest looking up the data in IPDEDS of colleges in the two counties, and seeing if there was enrollment before.  The College that closed, closed in 2021 so that may have skewed the data more male.  IPEDS is put out by the NCES, and reports what colleges report to it.

I do not think that a marriage gap between women and men is enough to explain this.  There is a general gap in many places, because just the presence of a surplus of men or women would not account for such a gap on its own.  Put simply women no longer need to settle to support themselves, and may not want to marry someone less accomplished than they are.

Andrew Beveridge said:

women no longer need to settle to support themselves, and may not want to marry someone less accomplished than they are

No. This is suitable for describing female academics in Boston college town or female professionals in Manhattan NYC, but it is definitely not suitable for a place like Rexburg where everyone wants to get married.

NO, check this: brightspotcdn.byui.edu/.../approved-housing-map-june-2023.pdf

In fact, I also have the YSA ward directory, and they also show the never male names of all LDS members in the area. According to statistics, the male to female ratio is still 1:1

This map doesn't prove or disprove anything. In fact, it's not relevant at all. Your question was why the ACS counts of never-married women vs. men are so disparate in Rexburg. College enrollment -- on campus or online -- doesn't matter. There are plenty of unmarried/never-married women (and men) that are not in college.

No, they wouldn't come here if they didn't go to college, very few local residents here

Really? So there are 64,349 people in the Rexburg Micro Area, and around 22,000 are BYUI on-campus enrollees. Around 4,000 people work for the university. What do the other 38,000 people do? You've observed them all and inquired as to their marital status? 

Glenn, I had the same response you did, but when I looked at the granular data, it seems like most of the strange data is in the city of Roxburg (about half the population of the MuSA), and looking at census tracts, it's in the area of the city where the university is.

Question: Doesn't the ACS use administrative data submitted by institutions for group quarters? Could this be an issue with data submitted by the university?

According to the IPEDS Feedback report 57% of the Students are female.

The report is available here and relevant graph is below:  nces.ed.gov/.../ReportPDF.aspx

Maybe LDS women are more similar to other women than you think.  Note the so-called 35 Peer Schools have 58% women.  These numbers are from 2019 per IPEDS.  Or maybe LDS guys drop out real fast :).