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 is the reason women live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men and not in the past, is to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, علامات الحمل بولد the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small, it has increased substantially with time.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, علامات الحمل بولد (https://glorynote.com/) check that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.