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 much longer than men today and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? There isn’t much evidence and we only have some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren’t sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.
We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological or 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. 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 that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1
It is interesting to note that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer 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 the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let’s see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.
There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
And كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور second, there is an increasing gap: كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.
You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Kermit Bindon created the group
Why do women live longer than men? 4 years ago