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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide incomplete answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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, 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. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

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

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.