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 makes women live much longer than men today, and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men today however not as in the past, علامات الحمل بولد has to relate to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 علامات الحمل بولد (just click the following page) men and women. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

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

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.