Why Are Women Living 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and افضل شامبو وبلسم relatively straightforward, 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 diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was tiny It has significantly increased over time.

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