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. Why do women live so longer than men and how does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral, and صبغ الشعر بالاسود environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain 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. Other 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.