Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand اوضاع الجماع out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, اوضاع الجماع the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once very small however, it has grown significantly in the past.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.