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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn’t sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, اوضاع الجماع biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don’t know exactly how much the influence of each factor is.
In spite of the precise weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present but not previously, is to do with the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line – this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1
This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.
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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is now.
Let’s examine how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.
You can confirm that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.
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Why women are more likely to live longer than men? 4 years ago