Why Do Women Live 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 the advantage has grown in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that all play a role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each factor صبغ الشعر بالاسود contributes.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men today and not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, صبغ الشعر بالاسود like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.