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 women are more likely to live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some answers. We recognize that biological, تحاميل مهبلية behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and تحاميل مهبلية relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. and women in the US live much, much 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 increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially with time.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.