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 does this benefit increase in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.
It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain 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. Others 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 parity line , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1
This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.
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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let’s now look at how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they used to 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 be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.
You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the «Change country» option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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