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. Why do women live more than men do today and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, اوضاع الجماع 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 all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.