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. What is the reason women live longer than men and why is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each factor is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (More inspiring ideas) women. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can confirm that these principles 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.