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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, علامات الحمل بولد (Find Out More) behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not previously, is to be due to the fact that several key 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. 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 all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, although there is a women’s advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller

Let’s examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

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 getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly over time.

If you select the option «Change country’ on the chart, determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.