Why Do 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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some solutions. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men do today and not in the past, has to relate to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور (glorynote.com) there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.