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 main reason women live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence is limited and علامات الحمل بولد (Click To See More) we're left with only limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men today, but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century 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 used to be very small however, it has grown significantly over time.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to check that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.