Why Do Women 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. Why do women live more than men do today and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? There isn't much evidence and we have only incomplete answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men today however not as previously, has to have to do with the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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, 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 above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and علامات الحمل بولد female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small, it has increased substantially in the past.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.