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? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is limited and we have only some solutions. We recognize that biological, Glorynote.com/%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%B6%D9%84-%D9%83%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D8%B1/ behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men but not previously, has to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity — which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1
This chart shows that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small It has significantly increased over time.
When you click on the option «Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.