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 much longer than men today, and why does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men and not in the past, صبغ الشعر بالاسود has to relate to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. 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 very small, it has increased substantially over time.

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