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 main reason women live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men do today but not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors 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, زيوت تطويل الشعر 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. It is clear that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.
This chart shows that, although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let’s see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.
When you click on the option “Change country by country’ in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
