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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 https://dnd.darkwindguild.com/index.php/Why_Women_Are_More_Likely_To_Live_Longer_Than_Men – click through the next web page – men and women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line – which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is now.

Let’s now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 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 terms of life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.

If you select the option “Change country’ on the chart, verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.