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. Why do women live so much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have partial answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. 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.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny It has significantly increased with time.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you are able to check that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.