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. Why do women live so more than men do today and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only incomplete solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But it is not because of certain biological factors 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is 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.

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

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