Why Are Women Living 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 have a longer life span than men? Why does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know 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 much the influence of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men in the present but not previously, is to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and افضل شامبو وبلسم relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, افضل شامبو وبلسم you will be able to verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.