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's the reason why women live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we have only some solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that 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.

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

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.