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 main reason women live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present and not in the past, has to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased over time.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, check that these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.