Why Do Women 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. Why do women live much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only incomplete solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution to each of these variables is.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.