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. Why do women live so more than men do today and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. We can see that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, علامات الحمل بولد the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, much 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 but it has risen significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, check that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.