Why Do Women 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. What's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is limited and we only have partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today and not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain fundamental 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. Others 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, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live much, much longer today than a century 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 once tiny however, it has grown significantly with time.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to determine if these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.