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. Why do women live longer than men and how has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn’t sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution to each of these variables is.
In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today and not previously, has to have to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, Www.Geocraft.Xyz/Index.Php/Why_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men 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 all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brother.
It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries that it is today.
Let’s now look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, 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 was once very small, it has increased substantially over time.
You can verify that these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the «Change country» option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.