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? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have partial solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men do today but not previously, has to be due to the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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, تحاميل مهبلية 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, 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.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was tiny, it has increased substantially with time.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.