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 have a longer life span than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for ابر التخسيس women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women 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 growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly in the past.

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