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. Why do women live more than men do today and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only partial answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brother.

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
We will now examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to check that these two points are applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.