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. What's the reason why women live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

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

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور France, and Sweden.