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 makes women live longer than men, and why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have incomplete solutions. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than men, صبغ الشعر بالاسود we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US are living much, much 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 increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially during the last century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.