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 why women are more likely to live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide partial solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or 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. Some are more complex. 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 parity line , this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, ابر التخسيس while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. as well as women in the US live much, ابر التخسيس 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 increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small, it has increased substantially with time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.