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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? There isn't much evidence and we have only incomplete answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, العاب زوجية 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much 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 ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, check that these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and العاب زوجية the UK.