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? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn’t sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren’t sure how much the influence of each factor is.
In spite of the precise weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that every country is above 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 chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage in all countries, اضيق وضعية للجماع the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let’s see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, 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.
And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically over the last century.
If you select the option “Change country in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Heriberto Hamel created the group Why do women live longer than men? 2 years, 8 months ago