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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological, العاب زوجية and environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present and not previously, is to be due to the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.