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. What makes women live much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and تحاميل مهبلية 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, verify that these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.