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 over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 we can see, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, 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, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور but it grew substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.