Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men

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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present and not previously, علامات الحمل بولد has 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 other issues 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, علامات الحمل بولد; glorynote.com, 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 every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

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