Why Are Women Living 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? And how does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present however not as in the past, has to have to do with the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

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

Second, there's an increasing gap: صبغ الشعر بالاسود The female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.