Why Women Are More Likely To 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 why women live longer than men? And how is this difference growing as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to 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.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men today, but not in the past, علامات الحمل بولد has to relate to the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For example, علامات الحمل بولد 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 diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

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