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 is the reason women live longer than men and why is this difference growing over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.