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 live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn’t sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we’re not sure how significant the impact of each factor is.
It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn’t because of certain biological or افضل كريم للشعر non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brothers.
The chart below shows that while there is a female 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 longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, there’s an upward trend: Men and 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.
Second, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small but it has risen significantly in the past.
If you select the option “Change country’ on the chart, you can verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Why women live longer than men? 4 years ago