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 reason women live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only limited 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 know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and العاب زوجية relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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. It is clear that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This chart shows that, العاب زوجية although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.