Why Are Women Living 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 reason women live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once very small, it has increased substantially over time.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, confirm that the two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.