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 is the reason women live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide limited solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know what the contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of the weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men, but not previously, has to relate to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For علامات الحمل بولد example, علامات الحمل بولد 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of 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.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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