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. What makes women live longer than men in the present, and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, 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 above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, العاب زوجية there is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small but it has risen significantly in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.