This European country has a shortage of men: “That’s why all my friends have gone abroad and found boyfriends”

Apart from a few exceptions, demographically, most countries have a more or less even split of men to women, hovering somewhere around the 50 percent mark give or take a few percent either way.

In Eastern Europe, there is a higher female share of the population, partly due to higher mortality rates in adult men. That is a trend that extends across most of Europe.

Latvian women outnumber the men

According to a recent report by Eurostat, there are more women than men in all of the European Union countries (104.4 women per 100 men) - that applies across the EU apart from Malta, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Slovenia. And there is one country where the gender ration is even more marked - Latvia, which has 15.5% more women than men – over three times more than the EU average rate.

Latvia also has an increasingly aged population. During the 20 years from 1 January 2004 to 1 January 2024, the EU has seen a 2.3 percent increase in those aged over 80. In Latvia, one of the countries with the highest increase, the number of 80-year-olds has risen from 2.9% to 6.1%.

The dearth of men is already causing problems in Latvia. Dania, a young single women from Riga explained that 98 percent of her work colleagues are female. “Just for the good balance, you would want to have some more men to flirt or chat with,” she says. “It’s just more interesting”.

Hire a husband for an hour

There are many other downsides to the lack of male company. A lot of women have no interest in DIY and it’s good to have a man around the house for plumbing, furniture assembly, carpentry, repairing faulty wiring or electrical goods...

Such is the demand that a number of companies have been set up to provide such a service. Remontdarbi in Riga allows women to “hire a husband with ‘golden hands’ for an hour” - experienced specialists will turn up within the hour ready for any task, simple or complex.

But for Latvian women who are looking to settle down, form for a long-lasting relationship and maybe even start a family of their own, things aren’t so simple. Dania’s friend Zane concludes, “That’s why all my friends have gone abroad and found boyfriends there”.

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