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 why women live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have some answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, 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 ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: علامات الحمل بولد Sweden, France and the UK.