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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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, 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. 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 now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years 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 was once extremely small It has significantly increased with time.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.