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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that all play a role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

Independently of the exact weight, صبغ الشعر بالاسود we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, is to have to do with the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. 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 women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.