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. Why do women live so more than men do today and how has this advantage increased over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited answers. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some 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. 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 women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one 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 female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to determine if these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.