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. Why do women live so longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't 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. Some are more complex. 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

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