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 more than men do today and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we’re left with only partial answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological 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 to each of these variables is.
We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn’t because of certain biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.
This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let’s look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.
First, there’s an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically during the last century.
You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور Sweden.
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Why women live longer than men? 4 years ago