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 longer than men, and why has this advantage increased over time? The evidence is limited and we’re left with only limited solutions. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over males, we aren’t sure how much each one contributes.
We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These 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 العاب زوجية 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brother.
The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.
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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is now.
Let’s now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially in the past century.
It is possible to verify that 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 Sweden.