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. Why do women live so much longer than men today, and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of 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, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, افضل كريم للشعر 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 implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brothers.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.