Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 women live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the number of pounds, علامات الحمل بولد we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men today however not as in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small It has significantly increased with time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, determine if these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.