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 longer than men and why has this advantage increased over time? The evidence is limited and we only have limited solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.
We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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, اوضاع الجماع 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 – it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
This graph shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let’s examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small however, it has grown significantly in the past.
When you click on the option “Change country by country’ in the chart, verify that these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
