Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men

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 in the present and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and ابر التخسيس we have only limited solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 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 to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, ابر التخسيس you will be able to verify that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.