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 is the reason women live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete answers. We know that biological, افضل كريم للشعر behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain 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. Others 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, 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer today than 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 to be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.