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? And how is this difference growing as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

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