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 live more than men do today, and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is limited 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 are healthier than men; However, we’re not sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.
Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For example, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (find more information) 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line – this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.
You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
