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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain biological or 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 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, اوضاع الجماع much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: اوضاع الجماع While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

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.