Why Women Are More Likely To 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 the advantage has grown over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and اوضاع الجماع relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was very small It has significantly increased with time.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, اوضاع الجماع France, and Sweden.