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's the reason women have a longer life span than men? And why is this difference growing over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 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 all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there's 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.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly over time.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.