Why 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 has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, العاب زوجية behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

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