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 reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and افضل كريم للشعر 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders 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.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.