Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we have only limited solutions. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. 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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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.