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's the main reason women live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور we only have limited answers. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men today, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (my latest blog post) but not previously, is to do with the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

You can verify that 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.