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 longer than men and how does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 افضل كريم للشعر 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. It is clear that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists in all countries, افضل كريم للشعر cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. 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.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you can determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.