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 longer than men in the present, and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For العاب زوجية 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: العاب زوجية While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was tiny but it has risen significantly over time.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.