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's the reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only partial answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (experienced) 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 above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live 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 terms of life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased with time.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.