Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is limited and we only have incomplete solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as in the past, has to relate to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور (anchor) men and women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.