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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men today but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and العاب زوجية relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.