Why 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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide partial answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men do today and not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that 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.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام and Sweden.