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 women live longer than men? And why is this difference growing as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide partial solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. For example, علامات الحمل بولد 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men 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.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically in the past century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.