Why Do 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 makes women live more than men do today and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide incomplete solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, is to relate to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.