IT'S official, Ballarat is in a man drought.
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According to new population data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are over 3000 more women living in Ballarat which has now reached a population of in excess of 107,000.
But interestingly there is a trend in younger years with more boys being born than girls. Males actually outnumber females in every age group up to the age of 29.
But as the population ages, women start to dominate, with a major fall off of men aged 30-60.
Women in Ballarat also live much longer, with 1603 women aged 85 or over, almost double the amount of men at 847.
The statistics show there are 55,293 females in Ballarat and 52,032 males.
And it's a trend which according to leading social researcher and demographer Mark McCrindle is common across the board in cities and regional centres that have large populations.
"There are more females than males nationally, even more females in Victoria and even more still in Ballarat," Mr McCrindle said.
"As we move down the scale there is a real shortage of men to women. However, that trend changing in areas where there is large mining and large industry for example Townsville, Darwin parts of far north Queensland have more men than women,
"It's also evident in areas where there are large military basis and regional areas that rely on agriculture."
Mr McCrindle said that made Ballarat interesting as its statistics were different to other regional centres. "You've got agriculture in the region, but without a doubt Ballarat has become a regional city that's not purely reliant on one sector," he said. "That's why you are getting more women than men.
"Growth is the theme of Ballarat. The national ABS data lists Ballarat as the fastest growing inland city in Australia, it grew 1.84 per cent in the last year which is the biggest of any inland city.
"Canberra is the only one as a city that grew faster, but if you take out capital cities, Ballarat is the clear stand out.
"Ballarat's median age is 42, whereas the rest of the country is 38. As women live longer, the higher you're median age, the more women you will have."
Mr McCrindle said it was a national trend for more boys to be born than girls. "It changes slightly year-on-year, but as a rule you have 105 boys to 100 girls," he said.
He added that Ballarat was strong demographically compared to the national average in the 10-19 age group.
But as was often the case, it fell away slightly in the 20-24 age group, despite having a university and a TAFE, but then saw a large drop off of numbers in the 25-29 age group as people tended to move away to bigger centres for work.
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