Why 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. Why do women live longer than men, علامات الحمل بولد and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we have only limited answers. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men today but not previously, has to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? 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, 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years 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 used to be quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.