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's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited solutions. We recognize that biological, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they were 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 extremely small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.