Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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. Why do women live so longer than men in the present and how does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام men and women. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام women was smaller
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you can check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.