Why do 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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown as time passes? There isn’t much evidence and we have only some solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we’re not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 العاب زوجية [simply click the following internet site] men and women. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This chart shows that, although there is a women’s advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is today.

Let’s look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

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

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small but it has risen significantly with time.

If you select the option “Change country in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.