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 so much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men in the present but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, علامات الحمل بولد 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men and 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.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can check that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.