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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, افضل كريم للشعر, that guy, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, determine if these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.