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 reason why women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? There isn’t much evidence and we have only incomplete answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren’t sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn’t because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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 implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for Www.borla.vg/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=glorynote.com%2F%25D8%25B9%25D9%2584%25D8%25A7%25D9%2585%25D8%25A7%25D8%25AA-%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D8%25AD%25D9%2585%25D9%2584-%25D8%25A8%25D9%2588%25D9%2584%25D8%25AF%2F women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries that it is today.

Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there’s an upward trend. as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.