Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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. Why do women live more than men do today and how has this advantage increased over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for صبغ الشعر بالاسود longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, صبغ الشعر بالاسود the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.