Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men in the present but not in the past, has to do with the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, 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. It is clear that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.