This post will look at the demographics of America’s governors and compare them to the demographics of America itself. It will specifically examine gender and race, which are easy to determine. I would add other factors, such as income, age, or area of birth – but these factors are a lot harder to find and work with.
A future post will examine how political party plays into this.
More below.
Gender
About half of Americans are male, and about half of Americans are female. Most of America’s governors, on the other hand, are male:
Out of the fifty governors in the United States, 44 are male and 6 are female as of October 8th, 2011. In other words, 88% of governors (about every nine out of ten) in the United States are currently males.
Race
Race is a bit more complicated than gender. According to the 2010 Census, 63.7% of Americans are white – which means that 36.3% of Americans are not white.
The majority of America is white, and similarly the majority of America’s governors are white:
Out of the fifty governors in the United States, 45 are white and 5 are minorities as of October 8th, 2011. Exactly nine out of ten governors in America is white.
Gender and Race
We can combine these two sets of data to get a map of the America’s governors by both gender and race:
Out of the fifty governors in the United States, 41 are white males, 4 are white females, 3 are none-white males, and 2 are non-white females as of October 8th, 2011. White males overachieve quite splendidly; despite being less than one-third of the overall population, they compose more than four out of five of America’s governors. 82% of America’s governors are white males.
Conclusions
America is a very diverse place.
Its governors, on the other hand…not so much.
–inoljt
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