Why Women Are More Likely To 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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only some solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, علامات الحمل بولد 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 علامات الحمل بولد 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 parity line , this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.