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 makes women live more than men do today and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide incomplete answers. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men do today however not as in the past, is to be due to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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. We can see that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

You can confirm that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور France, and Sweden.