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 are more likely to 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 an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, علامات الحمل بولد 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 - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US have a much longer life span 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 once quite small It has significantly increased in the past.

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