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. Why do women live much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, اضيق وضعية للجماع however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.