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? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, العاب زوجية 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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In wealthy countries, العاب زوجية the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

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 life expectancy used be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

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