Why Women Are More Likely To 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: علامات الحمل بولد While the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small, علامات الحمل بولد it has increased substantially over time.

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