Why 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 why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 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 line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from any country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two points stand زيوت تطويل الشعر 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.

There is an increasing gap: زيوت تطويل الشعر The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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