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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial answers. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these changing 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and العاب زوجية female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially with time.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and العاب زوجية (glorynote.com) Sweden.