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 makes women live longer than men and why does this benefit increase in the past? There isn't much evidence and we have only partial answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, علامات الحمل بولد 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 diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity 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 points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small It has significantly increased over time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.