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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men do today and not previously, has to be due to the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 افضل كريم للشعر women. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brother.

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as 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.

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially over time.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.