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. Why do women live more than men do today and how is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only incomplete answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For example, زيوت تطويل الشعر 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small It has significantly increased 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.