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 makes women live more than men do today and how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide limited solutions. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in the longevity of women over men, افضل كريم للشعر we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

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

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.