Why Are Women Living 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 longer than men in the present, and why is this difference growing over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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 we can see, العاب زوجية every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, العاب زوجية this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.