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's the reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is limited and we only have limited answers. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage in all countries, افضل شامبو وبلسم (click) the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand افضل شامبو وبلسم out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women 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.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.