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 longer than men and why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we have only some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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, 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 - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.