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. Why do women live so longer than men in the present, and why has this advantage increased in the past? There isn’t much evidence and we’re only able to provide incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we’re not sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.
It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain 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. Some 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.
This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.
__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century 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 terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially in the past century.
You can confirm that these principles are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, زيوت تطويل الشعر and Sweden.