Why Are Women Living 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 in the present, and why has this advantage increased in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only partial solutions. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors which play a significant role in women who live longer than males, علامات الحمل بولد we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live longer than men do today and not in the past, علامات الحمل بولد has to have to do with the fact that some 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. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you can check that these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.