Why 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 much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, زيوت تطويل الشعر like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 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 brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years 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 very small It has significantly increased with time.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.