AIDS in the Circle City

Unmarried Male Partner Household Correlations

Correlations

Maps

References

               The second correlation I did was the percentage of households that have two unmarried male partners living together.  I was not surprised to find out that the zip code with the most unmarried male households was 46202, which is home to Massachusetts Avenue, a noted gay hotspot.  The second highest was 46201, home to at least two bathhouses in the Indianapolis area.  The x-y plot for this correlation is as follows:

               There is a clear and strong correlation between the number of Cumulative AIDS cases and the percent of unmarried male partner households.  The correlation coefficient is a remarkably high 0.934.  Surprisingly, the correlation between the percent of the white population and the percent of unmarried male partner households is negative, coming out with a -.487. 

             The point with the arrow is the one outlier.  It is the zip code that includes Massachusetts Avenue, the neighborhood that is more widely known in Indianapolis as one of the gay neighborhoods, along with Broadripple. 

             This was very surprising to me, as I had assumed that the majority of gay men in those areas, especially the before-mentioned zip codes, were predominately white.  Moreover, what is perhaps even more surprising and incredibly interesting, is that the correlation between the percent of the black population and the percent of unmarried male partner households is positive, a 0.488.  

            In much of the literature that I have read about black gay men, often refers to men on the "down-low". (4) The “down-low” refers to African-American men who have sex with other men, but do not consider themselves to be gay.  They have oftentimes unprotected sex with another male and then return to a monogamous relationship with a girlfriend, fiancé, or wife.  The “down-low” could be one of the reasons contributing to this positive correlation, along with other factors.

Back to Race Correlations                                    Next to Travel Time to Work