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. What's the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide partial solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men but not previously, has to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, اضيق وضعية للجماع (over here) 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, اضيق وضعية للجماع 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once tiny however, it has grown significantly in the past.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.