WASHINGTON — Overall, there are slightly more men than women in the world. According to United Nations estimates for 2015, there are 101.8 men for each 100 women, with the number of men rising gradually each year since 1960.

But a map by the Pew Research Center with the latest U.N. data clearly shows that men and women are distributed unequally around the globe. In the countries of the former Soviet Union, for example, women outnumber men. Conversely, there are more men than women in Asia, Arab countries and Northern Africa.

Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Estonia are among the countries with the largest female populations. The same countries also lead world statistics in the life-expectancy gap between men and women. In Belarus, men have a life expectancy of 65.3 years, while it’s 77 for women. Only civil war-torn Syria has a bigger life-expectancy gap between men and women.

The national differences between male and female populations change with age. In Russia, for example, the gender ratio is clearly divided by age groups. There are more new-born boys than girls in Russia each year. Men continue to outnumber women until the age of 31. But from the age of 32, there are more females than males, with the gap growing wider every year.

Much of the gender discrepancy can be explained by history. The demographics in the former Soviet Union have been greatly influenced by its history during the 20th century. According to the very first census conducted in Russia 1897, there were 98.9 men for every 100 women. It almost matches today’s gender ratio in the U.S. (98.3 men for 100 women).

The proportion of women in Russia started to rise in World War I, and continued through the Russian civil war, hunger and the “Great Terror” in the Soviet Union. According to the census of 1939 there were 91.9 men for every 100 women in Russia. Then World War II had a devastating impact on the population of the Soviet Union, with a disproportionate number of men falling in the conflict.

The gap started to grow again in the 1990s due to early mortality among men, with alcohol abuse a factor.

The reverse is true in China and India, countries known for their practice of sex-selected abortion and female infanticide. There are 106.3 men for every 100 women in China and 107.6 in India. This kind of discrepancy can lead to problems like higher violence and homicide rates, scientists argue. Chinese authorities struggle to narrow the gap by toughening punishment for gender-selected abortion and providing extra pensions for parents of girls in rural areas.


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