Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 makes women live much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (Full Guide) 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 parity line - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

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

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.