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 live much longer than men today and why does this benefit increase in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.