Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men

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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 more than men do today and how is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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. As you can see, زيوت تطويل الشعر every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy 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: Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: زيوت تطويل الشعر Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.