Why Women Are More Likely To 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. What's the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and ابر التخسيس 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was quite small, it has increased substantially with time.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.