It's raining men in Sweden

For the first time in recorded history, Sweden has a surplus of men, with the sex ratio surging to rival male-dominant nations like China and India. Some say the population transformation is due to a longer life expectancy for Swedish men, but others blame it on the recent influx of migrants—many of whom are unaccompanied men from Afghanistan, Syria, and North Africa. Whatever the reason, the unprecedented shift has prompted researchers and population experts to study the implications of a male-dominated society.

Sweden may be experiencing the most dramatic boost in men, but Europe’s sex ratio, or number of men born for every 100 women, also is on the rise. This demographic one-upmanship is taking place in Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and Britain, with British statistics officials predicting men will make up the national majority by 2050.

In almost every country in the West, women have always outnumbered men. Worldwide, the average sex ratio is estimated at 105 females for every 100 males born, and women tend to live longer, further widening the gap. But countries like China and India widely practice sex-selective abortion and female infanticide, resulting in unnaturally male-dominant populations with a sex ratio of about 100 women for every 118 men. With Sweden’s philosophy of women a world away from those two nations, experts are flummoxed over why the affluent Nordic kingdom is seeing a similar gender split.

“This is a novel phenomenon for Europe,” said Francesco Billari, a University of Oxford demographer and president of the European Association for Population Studies. “We as researchers have not been on top of this.”

Last year, Swedish officials noticed a slight edge, reporting 277 more men than women in the country. Since then, the number has climbed to 12,000. In a country of less than 10 million, that’s still not an enormous gender split, but population experts say it’s not unreasonable to expect the number of men to continue to mushroom. Swedish statistics officials say the demographic changes likely are due to men catching up with women in terms of life expectancy: an average of 80 and 84, respectively.

But others link the population shift to Sweden’s open welcome of asylum-seekers, with the country accepting more migrants per capita than any other country in 2015. According to a recent BBC report, 1 out of 10 people living in Sweden are migrants. And most of them are men. Data from the International Organization for Migration claims men made up more than 66 percent of adult migrants channeled through registration in Italy and Greece last year. And 90 percent of all unaccompanied minors—that could mean teenagers as old as 17—were male.

Some worry this tidal wave of single young men in Europe will mean mounting rates of crime and violence against women. In January, German police charged 18 men with robbing, groping, or sexually assaulting women in connection with New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne. According to reports given to authorities, the men looked “North African or Arabic,” and later evidence proved the perpetrators were foreign-born asylum-seekers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.