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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have a few clues and افضل كريم للشعر, visit this web page link, the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

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