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 makes women live longer than men in the present and how has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for افضل كريم للشعر longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.