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 women are more likely to live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and تحاميل مهبلية 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 parity line , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and تحاميل مهبلية 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once tiny however, it has grown significantly in the past.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.