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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don’t know exactly how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men in the present but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. 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 longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.

Let’s now look at how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and Pediatriajournal.ru/authors/show4797/talyipov_s.r..html?returnurl=http%3a%2f%2fglorynote.com%2F%D8%B5%D8%A8%D8%BA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D8%B1-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%AF%2F female life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live 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 life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially with time.

Using the option ‘Change country’ on the chart, check that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.