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’s the main reason women have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only partial solutions. We know that behavioral, http://www.abcbet.pl/forum/profile.php?id=630372 biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.

Let’s now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased in the past.

By selecting ‘Change Country’ on the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.