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 makes women live longer than men in the present and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 survivors, ابر التخسيس 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: ابر التخسيس Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

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