Why Are Women Living 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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have partial answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today and not previously, is to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? 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 diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, زيوت تطويل الشعر cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than 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 extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.