Why Do 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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only incomplete answers. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that play an integral role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.