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 is the reason women live longer than men and how has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, علامات الحمل بولد like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For example, علامات الحمل بولد 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 ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years 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 very small but it increased substantially over the last century.

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