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 makes women live more than men do today, and why is this difference growing over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. For example, علامات الحمل بولد 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 علامات الحمل بولد women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two aspects 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 a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

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