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 longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some answers. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today and not previously, is to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men and ابر التخسيس women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

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