Why Are Women Living 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 women are more likely to live longer than men? And why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only limited solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today however not as in the past, has to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, 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 be extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

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