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. Why do women live so much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only partial answers. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men do today, but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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, 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that 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.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially with time.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you can verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, اضيق وضعية للجماع France and اضيق وضعية للجماع the UK.