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? And why the advantage has grown in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today however not as previously, has to be due to the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders 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.

Second, the gap is increasing: كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially over time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, check that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.