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 makes women live longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have limited answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, تحاميل مهبلية regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, تحاميل مهبلية 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.