Everywhere in the world women live longer than men — but this was not always the case. The available data from rich countries shows that women didn’t live longer than men in the 19th century. What is the reason women live longer than men in the present, and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we’re only able to provide some answers. We know that biological, Glorynote.com/%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B0%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AD%D8%AF%D8%AB-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B2%D9%88%D8%AC%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%85/ behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we’re not sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.
We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, ended up raising women’s longevity disproportionately.
Everywhere in the world women tend to live longer than men
The first chart below shows life expectancy at birth for men and women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity — this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.
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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in developed countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.
If you select the option «Change country’ on the chart, you will be able to check that these two points apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.