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 in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence to each of these variables is.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological aspects 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 العاب زوجية (glorynote.com) 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 line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.