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 more than men do today and how has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only some answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and افضل كريم للشعر women's life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.