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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence is limited and we only have partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men today but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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, العاب زوجية 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was smaller
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live 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 increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small, العاب زوجية but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.