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. Why do women live so more than men do today and how does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, اوضاع الجماع verify that these two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.