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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why is this difference growing over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men however not as previously, has to have to do with the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and اوضاع الجماع 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both 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.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

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