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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and افضل كريم للشعر - get redirected here - the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, افضل كريم للشعر we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men and not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. What 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, 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, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.