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? Why does this benefit increase in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand افضل كريم للشعر out.

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

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small It has significantly increased with time.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.