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's the main reason women live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of the number of pounds, زيوت تطويل الشعر we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men today however not as in the past, is to be due to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century 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 was very small It has significantly increased over time.

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