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 reason why women live longer than men? Why the advantage has grown as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live much, much longer today than a century 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 very small, it has increased substantially over time.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you can check that these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.