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. Why do women live more than men do today and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only limited solutions. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men but not previously, is to be due to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? 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 ابر التخسيس 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, ابر التخسيس this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men as well as 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.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

You can check if the points you've listed 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.