Why 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 live much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور men and women. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to 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 be very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.