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's the reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have limited solutions. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, اوضاع الجماع - more helpful hints, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. For example, اوضاع الجماع 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. 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.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, check that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.