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 much longer than men today and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, افضل كريم للشعر 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

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