Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men

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 has this advantage gotten larger over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and علامات الحمل بولد 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 all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand علامات الحمل بولد out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.