Why Women Live 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 so longer than men in the present and how does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and صبغ الشعر بالاسود relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once tiny It has significantly increased in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.