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. What is the reason women live longer than men, and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that certain fundamental 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 العاب زوجية 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 العاب زوجية - relevant site - women. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

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