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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, اوضاع الجماع (click through the next web site) the reason women live so much longer than men today but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you are able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.