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? And why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is limited and we're left with only limited solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men do today but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. We can see that all countries are above 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.

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly over time.

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