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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men today and not in the past, العاب زوجية has to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 العاب زوجية women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

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

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.