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? What is the reason does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, Sandbox.vistaview.org/haiwai/home/space.php?uid=257394&do=blog&id=248023 we do not know how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men but not previously, has to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.
This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is now.
Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women’s life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.
You can check if the points you’ve listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.