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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and why is this difference growing in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only partial answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

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

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and زيوت تطويل الشعر (https://glorynote.com) Sweden.