Why Are Women Living 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 have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and 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. We can see that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries that it is today.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, اوضاع الجماع there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, اوضاع الجماع (glorynote.com) much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small, it has increased substantially over time.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.