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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men but not in the past, has to do with the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 women. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. 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 a widening gap: كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.