Why Do 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. What makes women live longer than men and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor صبغ الشعر بالاسود plays a role.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today, but not previously, is to relate to the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.