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 more than men do today and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only incomplete answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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, افضل شامبو وبلسم so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for افضل شامبو وبلسم 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did 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 to be very modest however it increased dramatically in the past century.

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 data: Sweden, France and the UK.