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 is the reason women live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and تحاميل مهبلية relatively straightforward, تحاميل مهبلية 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 - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.