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 longer than men and why has this advantage increased in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.
We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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. We can see that 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 new boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.
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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly with time.
It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور Sweden.
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Reina Herrin created the group
Why are women living longer than men? 4 years ago