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's the reason women have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men in the present however not as in the past, has to relate to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, 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.

The gap is increasing: العاب زوجية While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small however, it has grown significantly over time.

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