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 is the reason women live longer than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men in the present and not previously, has to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For example, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries that it is today.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century 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 life expectancy was once quite small It has significantly increased over time.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.