Why Are Women Living 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. What is the reason women live longer than men and how does this benefit increase over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today and not in the past, افضل شامبو وبلسم is to be due to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.