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 why women live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 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 line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.