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. Why do women live so longer than men, and why is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and Kraftzone.tk/w/index.php?title=Why_Are_Women_Living_Longer_Than_Men — Suggested Webpage, the evidence is not sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women’s longevity more than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.
Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.
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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let’s look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.
First, there is an upward trend. Men and women 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.
There is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially in the past century.
Using the option ‘Change country’ on the chart, you are able to check that these two points apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.