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 have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy 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 less than half each year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, علامات الحمل بولد much 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 an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially in the past century.

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