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 women have a longer life span than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each factor is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.