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. Why do women live longer than men and how has this advantage increased in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, اضيق وضعية للجماع this is not due to the fact that 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. Some 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 every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
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 between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased over time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.