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's the reason women live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. Although we know that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women who live longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that certain 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. Other 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 ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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 every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially over the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you can verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.