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 so longer than men in the present and why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is limited and we’re only able to provide limited answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.
We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological factors 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, 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1
This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half one year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is today.
Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.
It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Rafael Keats created the group
Why do women have longer lives than men? 4 years ago