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 has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we’re not sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.
In spite of how much amount, we can say that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men in the present but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. For افضل شامبو وبلسم 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 that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1
The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.
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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women’s life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, there’s an upward trend. Men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially over the last century.
It is possible to verify that these principles 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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Reina Herrin created the group
Why do women live longer than men? 4 years ago