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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور psychological and environmental variables which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.