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 women are more likely to live longer than men? Why the advantage has grown in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, صبغ الشعر بالاسود while the advantage for women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they used to 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 terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

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