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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we have only incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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. There are others that are more intricate. 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 علامات الحمل بولد survivors, علامات الحمل بولد (her comment is here) 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 parity line ; this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, 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 growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small, it has increased substantially in the past.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.