Why Do 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's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and اوضاع الجماع 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were a century 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 very small It has significantly increased over time.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.