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 so more than men do today and how is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only some solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each factor is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 line of parity - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.