Why 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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors 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 diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام out.

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

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially over time.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.