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 women live longer than men? And how is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men do today and not previously, العاب زوجية, visit the following post, is to relate to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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 men and women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, 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 getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once tiny, it has increased substantially over time.

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