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. Why do women live longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that some 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. Other 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand العاب زوجية out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.