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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier 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 their weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

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