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 why women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors 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. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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. It is clear that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however, افضل كريم للشعر it has increased significantly over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.