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 have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is limited and we’re only able to provide limited answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren’t sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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 비회원 구매 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 means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries that it is today.

Let’s look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.