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? Why has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we’re only able to provide partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we’re not sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.
It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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. It is clear that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brother.
This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half one year.
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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is today.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Men and تزويد متابعين تيكتوك (mouse click the following web site) women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 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 female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has grown significantly over time.
By selecting ‘Change Country in the chart, verify that these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.