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. Why do women live so longer than men and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we’re only able to provide limited solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.
In spite of the precise weight, we know that at a minimum, افضل كريم للشعر the reason why women live longer than men today and not previously, is to relate to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity – this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1
The chart above shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.
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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the last century.
Using the option ‘Change country’ on the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.