The authors introduced the adjusted sex ratio as a new, systematic measure of inequalities between the sexes in life expectancy, and used it for ages 0, 5, 15, 35, 50 and 70.1 They used the 5th percentile values of the countries with the highest life expectancy as reference "cutoffs" for each sex, and calculated the adjusted ratio for each country by dividing the local sex ratio by this cutoff ratio.[1] An adjusted ratio >1 indicates a male disadvantage and <1 a female disadvantage; around a value of 1, the authors defined a narrow "buffer" range in which they did not classify either sex as disadvantaged.1 Before adjustment, men had lower life expectancy than women in almost all countries and at all ages; after adjustment, in the 237 countries studied, between 13% (at age 0) and 33% (at age 70) of countries shifted from an initial disadvantage for men to a disadvantage for women.[1] Nevertheless, more than half of the countries remain disadvantaged in favour of men after adjustment, indicating that men are still generally disadvantaged in life expectancy in most countries.[1] The study identified regional patterns: India and about half of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the North Atlantic, sub-Saharan Africa, the Western Pacific, and Southeast Asia show a female disadvantage, with the number of countries with a female disadvantage increasing with age, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia; Central and Eastern Europe show a significant male disadvantage across age categories