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 longer than men and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men and not previously, is to do with the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? 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, اوضاع الجماع (such a good point) 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 longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.