KEY POINTS:
Single young men looking for love should head for the western end of Whakatane - the Bay of Plenty town has the country's largest concentration of eligible young women.
Single young girls wanting to get hitched should head for the area around Waikato University which has the country's single largest concentration of eligible young men and the worst woman drought.
The advice comes from Bernard Salt, a director and partner with Melbourne accountants KPMG.
He has analysed data from Statistics NZ's Census 2006 and compared the results with Census 2001 to find areas with the most singles and the greatest gender imbalance.
The study has confirmed New Zealand has a national man-drought - 248,000 men aged 25 to 34 and 271,000 women in the same age group.
"There's an undersupply of 23,000 young Kiwi men," Mr Salt said from Melbourne yesterday.
He believes this is because more young men than women go off to other countries for their OE.
Of Whakatane, he said: "It's potentially Bridget Jones by the beach."
Areas such as downtown Auckland had high concentrations of single young people, but the sexes were in balance. But Whakatane west and the suburban area around Waikato University were the two areas where the sexes were the most out of balance.
Whakatane's female glut mirrored the pattern in Australia, where women were often drawn to coastal lifestyle areas, Mr Salt said.
"Separated or divorced women often go to these areas when a relationship in the city breaks down."
Lifestyle areas also often provided good employment for women, particularly in care, education and health.
Waikato's male surplus could be explained by the university's attraction to young men, he said, perhaps because of courses offered or a concentration of accommodation which attracted more men than women.
Auckland had a man-drought in Clendon south and Murray's Bay on the North Shore was short of women.
"The girls are on the south side and the boys are on the north side," Mr Salt said.
"They are linked by the Harbour Bridge which should be renamed the Bridge of Love bringing the girls of Clendon south together with the boys of Murray's Bay."
He used data which divided the country into 1900 population "units" which in most cases equated to city suburbs or town areas.
He then took census figures and searched for the most glaring imbalance between the sexes in the 25-34 age bracket.
"In Whakatane, it's like the lyrics of that Beach Boys song, 'two girls for every boy'," Mr Salt said.
The census showed that in the 24-34 age bracket, the town had 105 single women and 66 men.
The Waikato University area had 270 single young men and 147 single young women.
Mr Salt will be in New Zealand next week on a three-city speaking tour.
He will speak on demographic changes at SkyCity in Auckland next Wednesday.
