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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: العاب زوجية Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small It has significantly increased over time.

You can verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.