Are There More Men or Women in the World?
More men, but only just. The UN age-and-sex tables count about 101.1 males for every 100 females alive today, a surplus of roughly 45.3 million people. Almost all of it sits in two countries, and on the central projection it is gone before 2100.
By the populationclock.org team · Published October 12, 2026 · All figures: UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant
The short answer
For 2024 the UN counts about 4.10 billion males and 4.06 billion females, so men outnumber women by roughly 45.3 million. As a ratio that is about 101.1 males per 100 females, a margin of well under one percent of humanity and close enough to even that you would never notice without counting.
One note on the arithmetic. The UN splits population by sex only in its five-year age tables, which count the middle of the year, while the total behind our live population counter is dated 1 January. The age tables therefore sum to about 35.0 million more people, almost exactly half of this year’s net growth of 70.0 million. Ratios are unaffected: the gap applies to both sexes.
Two countries hold the entire surplus
The global figure is an average of two opposite patterns, and a very small number of large countries decides it. India alone has about 45.7 million more males than females, which is more than the surplus of the whole world. Subtract it and the remaining 236 countries and territories, taken together, have slightly more females than males, by about 459 thousand. Add China, with a further 26.7 million, and the rest of the world comes out about 27.2 million the other way.
Counted by country rather than by person, the male majority is the minority position: 78 of the 237 entries in the dataset have more males than females. Counted by people it is the norm, because those 78 places hold about 61% of everyone alive. Most countries have more women; most people live in a country with more men. A global ratio is a weighted average, not a description of anywhere in particular.
The ratio flips at about age fifty
Slightly more boys are born than girls almost everywhere: the world’s youngest band runs at about 105.2 males per 100 females, and only three of the 237 entries in the dataset start out with girls ahead. That head start then gets spent, steadily, across a lifetime. The ratio is still above parity in the 45-49 band, at about 101.5, and has crossed below it by 50-54. From there the gap widens fast: about 89.5 males per 100 females at ages 65-69, 58.5 at 85-89, and roughly 23.3 among people aged 100 and over.
As headcounts, the world holds roughly 143 million more males than females under the age of 40, and roughly 109 million more females than males from 50 up. It also means a population’s sex ratio drifts female as it ages, with no change in birth or death rates at all, simply because more of its people sit in the bands where women predominate. We follow that aging in the world’s oldest countries.
Where men outnumber women by a lot
The extremes are far wider than the global average, and births have little to do with them. The highest ratio in the dataset belongs to Qatar, at about 248.2 males per 100 females, close to two and a half males for every female. The six highest ratios among countries of at least a million people are all on the Arabian Peninsula.
Migration is the mechanism, and the tables show it plainly. Between 1950 and 2024 the United Arab Emirates gained about 8.1 million people through net migration against natural increase of roughly 2.7 million, so most of its growth walked in rather than being born there. The age structure carries the signature: about 98% of the country’s male surplus sits in the working-age bands from 20 to 64. A sex ratio like that says less about a country’s families than about its labour market.
Where women outnumber men by a lot
At the other end sits a cluster that looks nothing like the first. The lowest ratio in the dataset is Hong Kong, at about 82.0 males per 100 females, and the rest of the bottom of the table is mostly Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The largest female majority in absolute numbers is Russia, with roughly 10.4 million more women than men, or about 86.6 males per 100 females.
These are the same age ladders as the world’s, only steeper. Russia crosses below parity in the 35-39 band, three five-year steps earlier than the world does, and by 65-69 it is down to roughly 64.2 males per 100 females against a world figure of 89.5. The same countries dominate our account of Europe’s quiet population decline, no coincidence: both fall out of the same age structure.
| # | Most male | Males per 100 | Most female | Males per 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Qatar | 248.2 | Hong Kong | 82.0 |
| 2 | United Arab Emirates | 177.0 | Moldova | 85.2 |
| 3 | Oman | 164.6 | Latvia | 86.4 |
| 4 | Bahrain | 163.4 | Russia | 86.6 |
| 5 | Kuwait | 157.2 | Armenia | 86.7 |
| 6 | Saudi Arabia | 153.4 | Ukraine | 86.9 |
| 7 | Equatorial Guinea | 111.5 | Belarus | 87.3 |
| 8 | Malaysia | 109.9 | Georgia | 87.3 |
Both columns are ranked across all 237 entries in the dataset, with a floor of one million people so a few thousand residents cannot swing a ratio. The leaders at each end are the same without it.
The youngest band is the other half of the story
Births are close to balanced but not exactly, and in a few large countries the imbalance at the youngest ages runs wider. Worldwide the under-five band sits at about 105.2 males per 100 females. Among countries of at least ten million people the highest figures are Azerbaijan at roughly 112.0, China at about 111.1 and Vietnam at about 110.8. The dataset records the imbalance without explaining it. By 2100 the projection has the same band back at about 106.5 in Azerbaijan and 106.2 in China, close to the world figure of 104.1: these gaps are not modelled as permanent.
The world tips female this century
Follow the tables forward and the answer changes. The world ratio is about 101.1 males per 100 females today, roughly 100.3 in 2050, and about 99.8 in 2100, when the tables hold around 10.2 million more females than males. The tables cover three years only, so the crossing sits somewhere between 2050 and 2100 without a date.
The cause is not a change in who gets born: the youngest band is still about 104.1 males per 100 females in 2100. It is age. The crossover point slides from the 50-54 band today to 60-64 in 2100, and far more of the world sits above that line by then, the same aging we lay out on our world population in 2100 page.
One twist, because country counts and person counts diverge again: the number of entries with more males than females actually rises, from 78 today to 92 in 2100. The global total still tips female, because the largest female majorities land in some very large populations, led by DR Congo and Pakistan at roughly 8.9 million and 7.2 million more females than males.
How much of this should you believe?
The near-term figures are among the sturdier numbers in a population projection. Everyone in the 2024 columns has already been born and counted once, and a cohort’s sex ratio changes only through mortality and migration, both slow movers for large populations. The ladder’s shape, boys ahead early and women ahead after fifty, is observed rather than assumed.
The long-run figures are softer, and the Gulf extremes softest of all, because they rest on migration assumptions rather than births: a different path for labour migration would reshape the top of that table without touching the bottom. Read the century-end numbers as direction and scale, a world drifting from a thin male majority to a thin female one for reasons mostly about age. Everything here is aggregated from the UN World Population Prospects 2024 medium variant, by five-year age group and sex, as described in our methodology.