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 why women live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren’t sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that certain 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. Others are more complex. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used click here to visit Glorynote for free 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.
Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.
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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let’s examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically over the last century.
You can confirm that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.