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 live longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today, but not previously, has to relate to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing 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 women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia, women live for افضل شامبو وبلسم 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.