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 why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, افضل كريم للشعر we aren’t sure what the contribution to each of these variables is.
We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 افضل كريم للشعر 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 above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1
This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is now.
Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.
First, there’s an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span 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 increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.
You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Why do women live longer than men? 4 years ago