Why 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 women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men do today and not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? 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 علامات الحمل بولد women. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In rich 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 shows male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: علامات الحمل بولد While the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly over time.

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