Why Women Are More Likely To 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. Why do women live so much longer than men today, and why does this benefit increase in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

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