Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

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

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام [Read the Full Posting] and Sweden.