Why Women Live 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. Why do women live more than men do today, and why has this advantage increased over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men today and not in the past, صبغ الشعر بالاسود has to be due to the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small but it has risen significantly over time.

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