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 makes women live more than men do today and how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each factor is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, اوضاع الجماع 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 - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's now look at how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.