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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and اضيق وضعية للجماع - get redirected here, the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

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

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small but it increased substantially in the past century.

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