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. Why do women live longer than men in the present, and why has this advantage increased in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men and not previously, has to do with the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years 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 tiny, it has increased substantially over time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.