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 is the reason women live more than men do today and how is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor افضل شامبو وبلسم plays a role.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men, افضل شامبو وبلسم but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

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