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 why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have incomplete solutions. We are aware that behavioral, زيوت تطويل الشعر biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live longer than men but not previously, is 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. 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 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and زيوت تطويل الشعر females at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.