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. What is the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, ابر التخسيس psychological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors 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 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 , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries that it is today.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they did 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 used to be tiny but it has risen significantly in the past.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.