Why Women Are More Likely To 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's the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide partial solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however, علامات الحمل بولد it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, علامات الحمل بولد and Sweden.