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 longer than men and how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide partial answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present but not previously, has to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the men and ابر التخسيس (look here) women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.