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. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men today however not as previously, has to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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, 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام men and women. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.