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. Why do women live much longer than men today, and why is this difference growing in the past? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These factors 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, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور you are able to determine if these two points apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.