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. Why do women live more than men do today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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. Others 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 every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, تحاميل مهبلية 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.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially over the last century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.