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 is the reason women live longer than men and why has this advantage increased over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide partial solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For العاب زوجية 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 line of parity - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

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

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, العاب زوجية there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

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