Why Women Are More Likely To 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 makes women live longer than men in the present and why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide incomplete solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain 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. 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود (find more info) 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brothers.

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
We will now examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased with time.

You can verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and صبغ الشعر بالاسود Sweden.