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. Why do women live longer than men and why is this difference growing over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today and not previously, is to relate to the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.