Why Do 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 live longer than men and how has this advantage increased over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today but not previously, is to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and تحاميل مهبلية (mouse click the up coming post) female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.