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 longer than men in the present, and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But it is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 اوضاع الجماع women. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once tiny It has significantly increased with time.

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