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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain 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 , it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live 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 used to be extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

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