Why women are more likely to 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 in the present and why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women’s longevity more than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.
In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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 – it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1
The chart below shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.
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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows men and Ewind2.com/__media__/js/netsoltrademark.php?d=glorynote.com%2F%25D8%25B2%25D9%258A%25D9%2588%25D8%25AA-%25D8%25AA%25D8%25B7%25D9%2588%25D9%258A%25D9%2584-%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D8%25B4%25D8%25B9%25D8%25B1%2F women’s life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.
There is an upward trend. Both men as well as 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.
The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.
It is possible to verify that the points you’ve listed are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the «Change country» option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
