Why Women Are More Likely To Live 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 how is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and افضل كريم للشعر the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, افضل كريم للشعر 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, 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 above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries that it is today.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

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

Second, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly over time.

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