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 makes women live longer than men, and why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have incomplete solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which all play a part in women’s longevity more than males, we aren’t sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.
In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present but not 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brothers.
The chart above shows that, while the advantage for Www.crustcorporate.com/wiki/Why_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.
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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.
When you click on the option “Change country’ on the chart, you will be able to check that these two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
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