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 longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of 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. Some 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 every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

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

Second, اوضاع الجماع (just click the up coming internet page) there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.