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's the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present and not previously, is to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, العاب زوجية the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was tiny It has significantly increased over time.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, you can confirm that the two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.