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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men however not as in the past, is to relate to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For افضل كريم للشعر 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, افضل كريم للشعر 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 above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. 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 much lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, verify that these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.