Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present and not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, علامات الحمل بولد while in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live a lot, 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 getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it has risen significantly with time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.