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. Why do women live so longer than men, and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, تحاميل مهبلية biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For example, تحاميل مهبلية 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 above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is today.
Let's look at how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small It has significantly increased with time.

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