Why Do Women Actually Get Older Than Men?

We already know that women tend to get older than men. The World Health Organization (WHO) has now identified the most common reasons for this.

The good news first: people’s life expectancy continues to rise. A boy born today will live to be 70 on average, a girl 74. But where does this difference come from? The World Health Organization (WHO) also wanted to know this and has listed which causes of death affect gender and how.

These points have a greater impact on the life expectancy of men

The result: out of 44 causes of death, 33 have a greater impact on the life expectancy of men – mainly due to health and gender-specific reasons. The greatest differences between men and women are found in the following points:

• Heart disease (costs men 0.84 more years of life than women)
• Traffic accidents (cost men 0.47 years of life more than women)
• Lung cancer (costs men 0.4 years more than women)

Strong immune system thanks to X chromosome

Another advantage that girls have: genetics. The X-chromosome strengthens the girls’ immune system, so that they have a higher chance of surviving infancy. This is also confirmed by statistics: in 2017, the risk for boys to die before their fifth birthday was eleven percent higher than for girls.

But men’s behavior also influences their life expectancy. According to the WHO, men in rich countries smoke about five times more often than women and also drink four times more alcohol. What’s more, many men probably still regard illness as a weakness, because they seek medical advice much later than women when they have complaints.

How the job affects life expectancy

Another factor is that the risk of dying in a road accident is more than twice as high for men than for women from the age of 15. This is partly due to the fact that men are more likely to work in traffic areas, such as road construction or waste collection.

In addition, the WHO compared the ratio between murder and suicide rates. A man is 75 percent more likely to commit suicide than a woman, and men are four times more likely to be murdered. However, it must be noted that the absolute number of cases is rather small compared to other types of death.

The differences are smaller in poorer countries

It is also striking that in poorer countries the differences in life expectancy between the two sexes are smaller. There are two main reasons for this: First, more people in developing countries die from infectious diseases that can affect women and men equally. Secondly, the risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth is significantly higher for women in developing countries: according to this study, one in 41 women dies in this context; in economically richer countries only one in 3,300 women is affected.