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 makes women live much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only limited solutions. We know there are biological, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (enquiry) psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men do today however not as previously, is to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 parity line - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US are living much, 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 advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was very small It has significantly increased over time.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.