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. Why do women live so much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence of each of these factors is.

It is known 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. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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. It is clear that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the female 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 between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women 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, the gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small, it has increased substantially with time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, confirm that the two points also apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.