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 makes women live more than men do today, and why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But it is not due to the fact that 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. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for اوضاع الجماع women was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.