Why Do Women Live 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. Why do women live so longer than men in the present and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and ابر التخسيس relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. as well as 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.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

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