Why Do Women 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. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide limited answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men, but not in the past, افضل شامبو وبلسم has to be due to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were 100 years 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 life expectancy was once quite small It has significantly increased over time.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.