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Utah and its neighboring states are among the last in the nation where men outnumber women.

It's an eyebrow-raising stat that has Utah men worried that we smell bad, look worse or maybe said something totally inappropriate. Did we scare the women off?

To get to the bottom of this, we talked with Pam Perlich, the state's premier demographer and one of those outnumbered Western women. She let Utah's men off the hook, saying that this is a trend that began in Utah's maternity wards and extends all the way to the oil fields.

It's a biological fact that for every 100 baby girls there are 107 baby boys, which some attribute to an evolutionary attempt at balancing the scales, since men have shorter life expectancies.

What demographers like Perlich have observed is that younger states, like Utah, have a higher percentage of men. And conversely, the older a state's population, the more of its residents will be women.

As baby boomers age, the country is getting older. The median age is nearly 37. So for every 1,000 Americans there are 508 women. But in Utah, where the median age is just 29, there are 497 women out of every 1,000 people.

There are only five states that have a higher percentage of men: Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Hawaii and Nevada.

You can scroll down to page 51 of this Census Bureau report to read more about these three fascinating maps showing that in 1900 most of the states were majority male and how that has changed as the country has aged.

But Utah's relative youth isn't the only factor here. Utah's been young for a long time and women outnumbered men in the 1990 Census. Also why is this trend so concentrated in the Rocky Mountain West? This is where the economy comes in.

"You have to figure in the energy boom," Perlich said. "There are big enclaves of men who have come to work the oil booms."

And these Western states, along with Alaska and the Dakotas, is where much of that oil and natural gas is found. We've seen the growth in Uintah and Duchesne counties in recent years. And the energy development in North Dakota has that economy humming at a nation-leading level, though the recent drop in oil prices has led to some layoffs there.

Some of these states have also experienced an influx of migrant workers in the last two decades. Perlich noted Utah's construction boom in the 1990s and 2000s, which attracted mainly male workers.

So from her perspective, Utah and the rest of the interior West hasn't seen women leave in any unusual numbers — they've just attracted men. That said, men of Utah, remember to wash up, look your best and be sensitive, because it turns out women here have more options for dating partners than many other places.

If you want to check out the gender breakdown by county, check out the data Perlich helped put together for the Utah Community Data Project at the University of Utah.

mcanham@sltrib.com

Twitter: @mattcanham

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The Utah Effect, a blog by Tribune reporters, looks at statistics that explain the Beehive state. Find past entries at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/UtahEffect.