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 women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of 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. Some 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 صبغ الشعر بالاسود women. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: صبغ الشعر بالاسود female advantage in life expectancy used be very small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.