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’s the reason women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we’re left with only incomplete solutions. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological, ابر التخسيس, Glorynote says, and environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we don’t know the extent to which each factor plays a role.
In spite of the amount, ابر التخسيس we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men in the present, but not in the past, is to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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 women. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.
This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.
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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is now.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the men and women’s life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small, but it grew substantially during the last century.
If you select the option “Change country by country’ in the chart, you can verify that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
