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. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables which all play a part in women's longevity more than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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 means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you can verify that these two points apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.