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 live much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we’re left with only partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we’re not sure how much the influence of each factor is.
In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live longer than men in the present but not previously, has to be due to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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 , which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1
This graph shows that although there is a women’s advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often 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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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Both men and http://www.ifx0.com/psycode/index.php?qa=22667&qa_1=why-women-are-more-likely-to-live-longer-than-men women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.
By selecting ‘Change Country by country’ in the chart, you are able to check that these two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.