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. Why do women live much longer than men today and why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some solutions. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men and not in the past, has to relate to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, افضل كريم للشعر - click this site, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small, it has increased substantially in the past.

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