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. What is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial solutions. We know that behavioral, افضل كريم للشعر biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We know that women live longer than men, افضل كريم للشعر regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

You can confirm 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.