Why Do 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. Why do women live so more than men do today, and why is this difference growing over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some solutions. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain 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 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, اوضاع الجماع 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 every country can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men 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.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.