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. What's the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide limited answers. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 from any country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially in the past century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.