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's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological factors 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, اضيق وضعية للجماع while the advantage for women exists across all countries, اضيق وضعية للجماع the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct 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.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.