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 main reason women live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that 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. 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام but it grew substantially during the last century.

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