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. Why do women live much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and العاب زوجية environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.