Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 why is this difference growing over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain 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. 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, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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 افضل شامبو وبلسم men and women. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially over time.

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