Why 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 how is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each factor is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and صبغ الشعر بالاسود women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, you can verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.