Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have incomplete answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men in the present but not previously, is to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years 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 used to be extremely small It has significantly increased in the past.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.