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 longer than men in the present, and why has this advantage increased in the past? There isn’t much evidence and we’re left with only limited solutions. We know there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women’s longevity more than males, we aren’t sure how much each one contributes.
In spite of how much amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not previously, is to have to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line – this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.
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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and ابر التخسيس female life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two things stand out.
There is an upward trend. and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The second is that there is an increasing gap: ابر التخسيس The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.
If you select the option “Change country from the chart, confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Isabel Pratten created the group
Why are women living longer than men? 4 years ago