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 main reason women live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women who live longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.
It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn’t due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 افضل كريم للشعر women. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.
This chart shows that, although there is a women’s advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.
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In rich countries the women’s advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically in the past century.
If you select the option “Change country in the chart, you can check that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.