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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, العاب زوجية 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 all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for العاب زوجية (just click the up coming internet page) women was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.