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 makes women live more than men do today, and افضل كريم للشعر why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren’t sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men today but not in the past, has to do with the fact that several 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. Certain 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, افضل كريم للشعر 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 , it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1
This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.
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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.
If you select the option “Change country by country’ in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Why women live longer than men? 4 years ago