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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly over time.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, اضيق وضعية للجماع and Sweden.