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 live more than men do today, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men in the present but not previously, is to be due to 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. Some are more complex. 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 parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live 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 widening: While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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