Why Women Live 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. Why do women live more than men do today and how is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present but not previously, has to be due to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both 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.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was quite small, it has increased substantially with time.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.