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 much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn’t sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we’re not sure how much the influence of each factor is.
We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn’t because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, ابر التخسيس 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.
This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is now.
Let’s look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small however, it has grown significantly over time.
If you select the option “Change country in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Rafael Keats created the group
Why do women live longer than men? 4 years ago