Why Women Live Longer Than Men

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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 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. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. 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 ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 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 life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور you are able to confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور the UK.