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. What's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have some solutions. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

It is known that women live longer than males, 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 relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as 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 a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.