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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and اوضاع الجماع environmental variables that play an integral role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men in the present and not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, اوضاع الجماع the difference is only half a year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small It has significantly increased over time.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.