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's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, صبغ الشعر بالاسود regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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