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 much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the weight, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (glorynote.com) we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men do today and not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for 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 a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as 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.

Second, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.