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, علامات الحمل بولد and why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only limited answers. We know there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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 men and women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.