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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain 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. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly with time.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.