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 much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men and not in the past, is to do with the fact that certain key 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. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And زيوت تطويل الشعر second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points also apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.