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. Why do women live much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have partial answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand صبغ الشعر بالاسود - please click the following webpage - out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small It has significantly increased in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.