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 live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? There isn’t much evidence and we’re left with only some solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and صبغ الشعر بالاسود environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than men, we don’t know the extent to which each factor plays a role.
In spite of how much amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men in the present however not as in the past, has to relate to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.
This chart illustrates that, although there is a women’s advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.
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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let’s now look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 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 terms of life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically over the last century.
You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the «Change country» option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.