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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how is this difference growing in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only incomplete answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each factor is.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For example, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور - Going On this site - 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

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

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you are able to verify that these two points apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.