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 makes women live more than men do today, and why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete solutions. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that all play a role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage is present everywhere, افضل شامبو وبلسم global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

You can check if 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.