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 much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (glorynote.com) the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over males, we aren’t sure what percentage each factor plays in.
In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men today however not as in the past, has to relate to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 – it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1
This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.
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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let’s see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly in the past.
When you click on the option “Change country from the chart, verify that these two points also apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
