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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn’t sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than males, it isn’t clear how much each factor contributes.
We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.
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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let’s examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women’s life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.
First, زيادة عدد ساعات يوتيوب (firmidablewiki.com) there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.
You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the «Change country» option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.