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. What's the reason women live longer than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide some answers. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.

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