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. What's the main reason women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how much the influence of each factor is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For example, علامات الحمل بولد 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand علامات الحمل بولد out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, check that these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.