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 reason women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each factor is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brothers.

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, ابر التخسيس [my company] cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men 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.

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

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