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 is the reason women live much longer than men today and how is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors 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 in the present, but not in the past, has to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is 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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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and علامات الحمل بولد (glorynote.com official) female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small but it has risen significantly over time.

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