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 makes women live much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we’re left with only partial solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women living longer than men, علامات الحمل بولد we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.
In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not in the past, is to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.
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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States 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 increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.
You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Why are women living longer than men? 4 years ago