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. What's the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we have only partial answers. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women living longer than men, we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today and not previously, is to relate to the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 ابر التخسيس 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and ابر التخسيس women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century 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 tiny, it has increased substantially over time.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.