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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? Why is this difference growing over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and 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 علامات الحمل بولد men and women. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

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