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? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren’t sure how strong the relative contribution 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 non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1
The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.
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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let’s look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand زيوت تطويل الشعر out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders 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.
The gap is widening: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was tiny It has significantly increased over time.
By selecting ‘Change Country’ on the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Isabel Pratten created the group
Why do women live longer than men? 4 years ago