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. Why do women live so more than men do today and why does this benefit increase in the past? There isn't much evidence and we have only partial answers. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain 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. Other 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, افضل كريم للشعر differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women 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, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small but it increased substantially in the past century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.