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 main reason women live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn’t sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we’re not sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.
We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brother.
It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let’s look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women’s life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
And second, there is a widening gap: http://copus.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=Glorynote.com (https://images.google.com.pr/url?q=http://copus.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=Glorynote.com) (https://images.google.com.pr/url?q=http://copus.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=Glorynote.com) The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.
It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.