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? And how is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide incomplete answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, اوضاع الجماع women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and اوضاع الجماع women's life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

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

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially over the last century.

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