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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, زيوت تطويل الشعر (Read More In this article) 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, 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. We can see that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, check that these two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.