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 makes women live longer than men in the present and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men however not as previously, has to have to do with the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and صبغ الشعر بالاسود relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 line of parity - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. 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 countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

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

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly with time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.