Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men

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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 live much longer than men today and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and زيوت تطويل الشعر the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men and not in the past, has to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements 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 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, زيوت تطويل الشعر differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be quite small It has significantly increased over time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.