Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 is the reason women live longer than men? And why is this difference growing as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, افضل كريم للشعر; glorynote.com, we don't know how much each one contributes.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not because of 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. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small, it has increased substantially over time.

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