Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 women live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide partial solutions. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today however not as in the past, has to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For افضل شامبو وبلسم 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: افضل شامبو وبلسم While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it has risen significantly over time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, check that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.