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 much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer 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 next chart shows the life expectancy of males and اضيق وضعية للجماع females at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

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

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

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you can determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: اضيق وضعية للجماع Sweden, France and the UK.