Why Are Women Living 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 have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We know that women live longer than males, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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 women. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.