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's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For العاب زوجية 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 all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.