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. Why do women live much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and اضيق وضعية للجماع (updated blog post) environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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. It is clear that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, اضيق وضعية للجماع difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were 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 terms of life expectancy used to be very small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.