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 why women live longer than men? Why the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide partial solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 men and women. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US are living 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 growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام you are able to verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام France and the UK.