Why Are Women Living 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 women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. For العاب زوجية 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. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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