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 live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that some significant non-biological elements 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, العاب زوجية 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, 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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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, العاب زوجية and Sweden.