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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men in the present and not in the past, has to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and افضل شامبو وبلسم (visit the up coming webpage) female life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly in the past.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.