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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren’t sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men and not previously, is to have to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.
This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live for ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.
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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.
When you click on the option “Change country’ on the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Why are women living longer than men? 4 years ago