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's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, العاب زوجية behavioral, and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.