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 live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today however not as previously, is to have 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, العاب زوجية 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men 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 growing: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and العاب زوجية (information from glorynote.com) the UK.