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's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete answers. We know there are behavioral, ابر التخسيس biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men do today but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and 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. It is clear that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and ابر التخسيس 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.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once very small It has significantly increased over time.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.