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 is the reason women live more than men do today, and why has this advantage increased in the past? There isn't much evidence and we only have incomplete answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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. There are others 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 parity line , which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, اوضاع الجماع the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

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

The gap is widening: اوضاع الجماع While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has grown significantly in the past.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.