Why Are Women Living 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 has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we have only incomplete answers. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In the richer countries, افضل شامبو وبلسم the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand افضل شامبو وبلسم out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly over time.

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