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 live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is limited and we're left with only partial answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, علامات الحمل بولد we do not know what the contribution to each of these variables is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small but it has risen significantly with time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can check that these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.