Why Are Women Living 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 live much longer than men today and why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is limited and we're left with only incomplete solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. For example, العاب زوجية 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 - this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.