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 longer than men in the present and how is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

We know 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. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often 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 women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.