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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only some answers. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (https://glorynote.com/) longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over 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 out.

There is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.