Why women live longer than men?
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 longer than men in the present, and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we’re only able to provide limited solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don’t know exactly how significant the impact of each factor is.
In spite of the amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men today but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of key 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, Parkingcomplaints.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.Php?d=glorynote.com 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.
This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.
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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women’s life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were 100 years 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 tiny It has significantly increased over time.
Using the option ‘Change country by country’ in the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
