Delilah Whetsel

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 and why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men today, but not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and صبغ الشعر بالاسود relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, صبغ الشعر بالاسود the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries that it is today.

Let's now look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. as well as 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.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.