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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we’re left with only some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don’t know exactly how significant the impact of each of these factors is.
We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.
The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.
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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is now.
Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it has risen significantly in the past.
You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (question.forex.pm) and Sweden.