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 have a longer life span than men? And why is this difference growing as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

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

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

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