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 women have a longer life span than men? Why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide incomplete solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not previously, is to relate to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new 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, especially for تحاميل مهبلية 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and 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.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.