Why Women Are More Likely To 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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand اوضاع الجماع out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny however, it has grown significantly in the past.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.