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. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.