Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men

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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? Why is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we only have limited solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.