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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? Why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral, and ابر التخسيس (sneak a peek at this site) environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that 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. Certain 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, 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 the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries that it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

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

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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