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 main reason women live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide partial answers. We know there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor العاب زوجية plays a role.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and العاب زوجية relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century 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 life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you can check that these two points also apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.