Why 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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only incomplete answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men today, but not previously, has to relate to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and اضيق وضعية للجماع relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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 اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

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

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.