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 have a longer life span than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men and not previously, has to have to do with the fact that certain 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. Other 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, 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 female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.