Why Are Women Living 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 live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, تحاميل مهبلية 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and تحاميل مهبلية 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, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, it has increased substantially with time.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.