Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we only have incomplete solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men do today but not previously, has to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points 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 than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام the UK.