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. Why do women live longer than men in the present and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

You can confirm that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.