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's the reason women live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have incomplete solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each factor is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain 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. Others are more complex. 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, اوضاع الجماع the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however, اوضاع الجماع it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to check that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.