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 reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don’t know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.
We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn’t because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, Glorynote.com/%d8%a8%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%a9/ 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, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity – it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1
It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries that it is today.
Let’s look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially with time.
By selecting ‘Change Country by country’ in the chart, check that these two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
