Why Women Are More Likely To 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. Why do women live more than men do today and why does this benefit increase in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries that it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and اضيق وضعية للجماع women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 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 very small It has significantly increased with time.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.