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 women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? There isn’t much evidence and we have only incomplete answers. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.
We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.
This chart shows that, Stat.antiplagiat.ru/clicks.php?hex&m=cc59&c=208a21&i=876&u=49a0&l=aHR0cHM6Ly9nbG9yeW5vdGUuY29tLyVkOCVhNyVkOSU4NCVkOCVhNyVkOCVhOCVkOCViMSVkOCVhNyVkOCVhYy8- while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.
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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.
Using the option ‘Change country from the chart, you can verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.