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 makes women live more than men do today and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and 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 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 every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small It has significantly increased with time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.