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 is the reason women live more than men do today, and why does this benefit increase in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men, but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing 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 men and women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer 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 countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living 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 modest but it increased substantially in the past century.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, زيوت تطويل الشعر verify that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.