Why Women 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 and how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have incomplete answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For ابر التخسيس; glorynote.com, 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 line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brother.

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.