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 have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is sketchy and we’re only able to provide incomplete answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.
It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects 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, 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 ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. 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 examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.
First, there’s an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, زيوت تطويل الشعر the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small, it has increased substantially in the past.
You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Rafael Keats created the group
Why women live longer than men? 4 years ago