Why Do 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For example, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over 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 areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span 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 female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small It has significantly increased with time.

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