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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: اضيق وضعية للجماع Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small It has significantly increased with time.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.