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. Why do women live so longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide partial answers. Although we know that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, العاب زوجية while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you will be able to check that these two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.