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 longer than men in the present and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men today and not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For تحاميل مهبلية 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 - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.