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 much longer than men today and how is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we’re left with only some answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we’re not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.
In spite of how much weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men today and not in the past, is to be due to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, علامات الحمل بولد 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line – this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.
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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let’s now look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.
There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s a widening gap: علامات الحمل بولد The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically during the last century.
When you click on the option “Change country by country’ in the chart, verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
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Why women live longer than men? 4 years ago