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's the main reason women live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only some solutions. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for علامات الحمل بولد women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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