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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men today however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that a number of key 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. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, علامات الحمل بولد [why not try here] the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small It has significantly increased in the past.

You can confirm that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.