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 have these advantages gotten bigger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women who live longer than males, we aren’t sure what percentage each factor plays in.
We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1
The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.
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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let’s look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
There is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, Rhlug.pileus.org/wiki/Why_Do_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, there’s an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.
Using the option ‘Change country’ on the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.