Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable

experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC

makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, your statistical guide to the numbers all around us.

Last year on more or less we came across a rather startling fact.

An American academic had worked out that due to the large number of teenage boys

claiming asylum in Sweden,

it had skewed the sex ratio of the country's population.

Valerie Hudson of Texas A&M University in the US

carried out research that among 16 and 17 year olds,

there were a hundred and twenty three boys for every

100 girls. To put that into context China's one child policy led to a preference for sons, and female abortions resulted

in a sex ratio there of 117 boys for every 100 girls.

This would mean that imbalance in Sweden is way more extreme.

At the time we looked at this research and decided that yes, if you added the reported numbers of asylum seekers to the population

the sex ratio at age 16 and 17 would indeed work out at around a hundred and twenty three boys to a hundred girls.

Though even at the time we made the caveat that these were asylum seekers

meaning it wasn't clear if they'd be granted the right to remain in Sweden.

...