Throughout the later decades of the Soviet Union, there was a consistent imbalance in the ratio of men to women. This was not only due to the legacy of the Second World War (during which time the Soviet Union lost up to 27 million people, the majority of which were men), but also due to a much lower life expectancy among men in the Soviet Union in later years. This disparity has been attributed to high rates of alcoholism and accidental deaths, which was exacerbated by economic difficulties in the final decades of the 20
th century. In 1970, there were almost 20 million more women in the USSR than men, with each gender making up 54 and 46 percent of the population respectively. Natural births gradually offset the population imbalance created by the war (as the natural gender ratio at birth is generally 105 boys for every 100 girls born), and men made up over 47 percent of the population in 1989, however the
gender imbalance and
lower life expectancy among males remains a persistent problem across Russia and other former-Soviet states to this day.