Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 longer than men in the present and why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they did 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 very modest however it increased dramatically in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, العاب زوجية (use glorynote.com) France and the UK.