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 so longer than men in the present and how has this advantage increased in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence of each factor is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, افضل كريم للشعر like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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, افضل كريم للشعر 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 for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was 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 lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.