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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown as time passes? The evidence is limited and we have only incomplete solutions. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, we aren’t sure how much each one contributes.
We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain 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. 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, تخفيض ترتيب اليكسا 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.
This graph shows that although there is a women’s advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.
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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let’s examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live 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 very small, but it grew substantially in the past century.
It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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