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. Why do women live so longer than men in the present, and why does this benefit increase over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men and not previously, افضل شامبو وبلسم has to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men and women in the US live 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 getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once very small but it has risen significantly in the past.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you are able to check that these two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.