# more men or women in the world?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-or-women-in-the-world/350188>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2006, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-or-women-in-the-world/350188 "2006-03-28T01:33:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gunzack89](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@gunzack89](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gunzack89)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2006, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-or-women-in-the-world/350188/1 "2006-03-28T01:33:26Z")

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I was just wondering if anyone knew, or knew how to find out whether there are more men or women alive on earth right now…

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**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-or-women-in-the-world/350188/2 "2006-03-28T01:37:22Z")

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My gut instinct would be that even with the known preference in some countries for male children there are more women in the world. Women tend to live longer than men, and I believe this is true in countries that don’t have first class health care as well as those that do. Therefore, more female type people.

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**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2006, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-or-women-in-the-world/350188/3 "2006-03-28T01:43:33Z")

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There are slightly more males than females conceived but males have a higher mortality rate than females at every age. I also believe there are more females than males but the cite below disputes that.

However, [this chart](http://www.geohive.com/global/pop_gender.php) shows a slightly higher population of males in the world. I don’t know if that is accruate.

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**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2006, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-or-women-in-the-world/350188/4 "2006-03-28T02:08:37Z")

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**Shagnasty** ’s chart reminded me of the “missing women” idea: that there are millions fewer women in the world than there statistically should be. A few minutes Googling showed that there may be many factors at play:

> **[Sharing the best in global development research for policy and practice.](https://www.eldis.org/)**
>
> Access the latest editorially selected research. Share your work with development practitioners in over 180 countries. Find out more.

In a nutshell, there certainly are cultural preferences for male children in some populous countries, but there is also an effect from the Hepatitis B virus, where carriers of the virus have as high as 1.55 male to female ratio among their offspring.