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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. 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 what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, اضيق وضعية للجماع like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was tiny, it has increased substantially over time.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.