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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For example, اوضاع الجماع (simply click the following webpage) 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.