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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide partial answers. We know there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, اضيق وضعية للجماع 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. We can see that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

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

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small It has significantly increased in the past.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, you can verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.