2006 is likely to be the first
year in human history when, across almost all the world, women can expect
to outlive men, say researchers from the University of Bristol and the
University of Sheffield in this week's BMJ.
The trend towards this remarkable achievement will probably be confirmed
this week in the 2006 world health report.
" We tend to forget that in many countries of the world women
could expect, until recently, to live fewer years than men and that
maternal
death in particular remains a big killer,"
write Professor George
Davey Smith of the University’s Department of Social Medicine
and colleagues.
In Europe, men last outlived women in the Netherlands in 1860 and in
Italy in 1889. Elsewhere females' life expectancy has long exceeded males':
in Sweden since 1751, Denmark since 1835, England and Wales since 1841.
But in all western European countries the life expectancy gap between
women and men is now narrowing.
Greater emancipation has freed women to demand better health care and
to behave more like men, and most importantly to smoke, say the authors.
As this transition is so recent, the processes driving it cannot be purely
biological: they relate primarily to social change.
" We must remember, though, that life expectancy data apply
from birth onwards, so the picture would be different in some countries
if
life expectancy from conception was considered," they add.
" But even the life expectancy from birth may not be a permanent
achievement, given that the largest remaining untapped market for cigarettes
in the world is made up of women living in poorer countries," they
conclude.
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