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. What's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we have only partial answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each factor is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

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

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you will be able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.