Why Do 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 is the reason women live longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have limited answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور men and women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, verify that these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.