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 more than men do today and how is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over males, it isn’t clear how much each one contributes.
In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men today, but not previously, has to do with the fact that some 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. 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 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 a newborn girl can expect 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 global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.
__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let’s examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
There is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years 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 life expectancy used be very modest, اوضاع الجماع but it grew substantially in the past century.
By selecting ‘Change Country by country’ in the chart, check that these two points also apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
Group Admins
-
Isabel Pratten created the group
Why women live longer than men? 4 years ago