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. Why do women live more than men do today, and why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we have only some solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, افضل شامبو وبلسم However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today however not as in the past, is to have to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. For example, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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. It is clear that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century 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 extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you can verify that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.