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 much longer than men today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There isn’t much evidence and we only have limited answers. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women’s longevity more than men, we don’t know what percentage each factor plays in.
In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men, علامات الحمل بولد, cool training, but not in the past, has to do with the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.
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In wealthy countries, the women’s advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women’s life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.
It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.