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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence is limited and we only have some answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men do today, but not in the past, العاب زوجية (click through the following page) has to relate to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.