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 reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only incomplete answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men, but not previously, has to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and ابر التخسيس 2014. Two distinct features 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 than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

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