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 is the reason women live more than men do today and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today and not previously, has to be due to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, تحاميل مهبلية [Read Glorynote] 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.