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 are more likely to live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, 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 increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny but it has risen significantly over time.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.