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. Why do women live so much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, determine if these two points apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, العاب زوجية (Full Write-up) France and the UK.