Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men

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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 more than men do today and why has this advantage increased in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to 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 weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men and not in the past, has to relate to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and 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, تحاميل مهبلية 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. It is clear that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, تحاميل مهبلية while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was tiny, it has increased substantially over time.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.