Why Are Women Living 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 live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we only have some solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that some important 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. There are others that are more intricate. 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for العاب زوجية (glorynote.com) longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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