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 main reason women live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, علامات الحمل بولد we aren't sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, علامات الحمل بولد 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 we can see, all countries are 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 shows that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically in the past century.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, you can verify that these two points also apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.