Why 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's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

In spite of the amount, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present and not previously, has to do with the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 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 brothers.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you are able to determine if these two points apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.