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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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 other issues 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 ابر التخسيس women. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny, ابر التخسيس it has increased substantially with time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.