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 makes women live longer than men in the present and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

Independently of the exact amount, ابر التخسيس we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some important non-biological aspects 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand ابر التخسيس out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can check that these two points apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.