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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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, 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 ابر التخسيس women. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century 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 life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you can verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.