Why Women Live Longer Than Men?

Why Women Live 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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each factor is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For example, افضل كريم للشعر there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, افضل كريم للشعر 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brothers.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States 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 a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.