Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is limited and we only have partial answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, افضل شامبو وبلسم like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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 - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.