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 in the present, and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we’re only able to provide limited answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we don’t know how much each factor mywikweb.asia/index.php/why_women_are_more_Likely_to_live_longer_than_men contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and 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 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries as compared to the present.

Let’s see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women’s life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

You can check if the points you’ve listed are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the “Change country” option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.