Why Are Women Living 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 how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only limited solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

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