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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence is limited and we're left with only partial solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, ابر التخسيس this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be quite small It has significantly increased in the past.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.