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 is the reason women live longer than men, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

In spite of the weight, العاب زوجية (simply click for source) we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as in the past, is to relate to the fact that several significant non-biological elements 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 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand العاب زوجية out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.