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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men however not as previously, is to relate to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US are living much, علامات الحمل بولد 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 increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you can determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.