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 live longer than men and why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, افضل شامبو وبلسم the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: افضل شامبو وبلسم The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially in the past century.

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