Why Women Live 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. What is the reason women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brother.

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, ابر التخسيس the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has grown significantly in the past.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.