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 have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we’re not sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.
In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as in the past, is to relate to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1
It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists in all countries, صبغ الشعر بالاسود global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.
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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let’s see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.
There is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.
You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Why do women live longer than men? 4 years ago