Why Are Women Living 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 women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that all play a role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (glorynote.com) longer than her brothers.

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

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