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 live longer than men? And why is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that play an integral role in women’s longevity more than males, it isn’t clear how much each one contributes.
We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام women. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1
The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.
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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let’s look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Men and women 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.
Second, there’s an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.
You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.