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. What makes women live much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, افضل شامبو وبلسم; visit the next page, France, and Sweden.