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. What is the reason women live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small It has significantly increased over time.

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