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. Why do women live so longer than men and how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today and not in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 علامات الحمل بولد, read article, women. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

Using 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 data: Sweden, France and the UK.