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 is the reason women live more than men do today, and why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, has to relate to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for اوضاع الجماع longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

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