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 more than men do today and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide limited solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men, but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some 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. Certain 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, اوضاع الجماع much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you can confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.