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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? There isn’t much evidence and we’re only able to provide some solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.
We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn’t because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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 women. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity — this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
The chart above shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.
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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let’s look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand Forum.tiranatural.club/index.php?action=profile;u=343233 out.
First, there’s an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly with time.
You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the «Change country» option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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