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? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as in the past, has to have to do with the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and افضل كريم للشعر female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men as well as 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.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.