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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only partial solutions. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, is to relate to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for زيوت تطويل الشعر 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 above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.