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 makes women live longer than men in the present and how does this benefit increase in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over men, زيوت تطويل الشعر we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men however not as previously, has to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they were 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 to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you can determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.