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 live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each factor is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present however not as previously, has to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.