Why Women Are More Likely To 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 have a longer life span than men? Why is this difference growing over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only partial solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men and ابر التخسيس not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.