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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 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 modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.