The stats I found range from a 0.5 to 3% difference between the male and female population. What is the science behind this? How come there’s not significantly more of one or the other?
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Humans are one of species that obeys the Fisher’s Principle. For us and many other related species evolution has sort of achieve an almost even gender split.
If anyone had a mutation where they produced more of one gender than another. The gender that was suddenly rarer would have an evolutionary advantage when it comes to pairing of and having offspring, thus the way humans reproduce evolution will always end up bringing things back into balance.
That being said, it is not a perfect 50/50 split.
In humans naturally slightly more male babies are born than females.
However for cultural and biological reason human males don’t live as long as females.
As children grow older more boys die than girls and by the time they are old enough to have children themselves they are close to parity. Then in old age men die years before women. And among the older age groups women significantly outnumber men.
The gender ratio at birth appears to be not set in stone, but affected by outside factors. In times of crisis like a mother’s body that has undergone significant stress and malnutrition may be more likely to produce baby girls. The whys and how are not rally well understood.
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