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 is the reason women live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we’re not sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.
Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men do today but not previously, is to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line – it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1
This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let’s look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and شراء مشاهدات يوتيوب female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small however, it has grown significantly in the past.
Using the option ‘Change country in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.