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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? There isn't much evidence and we have only limited solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present but not previously, has to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and افضل كريم للشعر relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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, افضل كريم للشعر all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.