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's the main reason women live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is limited and we're left with only partial answers. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور relatively straightforward, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to 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 terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

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