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 makes women live longer than men and how is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام relatively straightforward, 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and 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.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.