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 live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we have only some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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, ابر التخسيس 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 , it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small however, it has grown significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points also apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.