Why Women Are More Likely To 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 women have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand العاب زوجية out.

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

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny but it has risen significantly with time.

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