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? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide partial solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, العاب زوجية this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brothers.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. 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.

And العاب زوجية second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

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