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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men however not as in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some important 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. 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, 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In the richer countries, علامات الحمل بولد the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased over time.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you will be able to check that these two points also apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and علامات الحمل بولد (glorynote.com blog post) the UK.