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 makes women live much longer than men today, and why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we have only incomplete answers. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables which all play a part in women's longevity more than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.