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. What is the reason women live longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide some answers. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام (glorynote.com) The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.