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 is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia, علامات الحمل بولد women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.