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’s the reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we only have incomplete solutions. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.
In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present however not as previously, is to have to do with the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and Glorynote.com/%d8%a8%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%a9/ relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her older brother.
This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.
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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let’s look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.
When you click on the option «Change country in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.