Why Women Are More Likely To 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 ابر التخسيس men and women. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct 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 ابر التخسيس women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

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