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 so longer than men and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we’re left with only limited answers. Although we know that there are behavioral, اضيق وضعية للجماع biological and environmental variables which all play a part in the longevity of women over males, we aren’t sure how much each one contributes.
In spite of how much amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line – this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1
This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than 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 very small however it increased dramatically during the last century.
When you click on the option “Change country by country’ in the chart, you will be able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Why women are more likely to live longer than men? 4 years ago