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 is the reason women live more than men do today and how has this advantage increased over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men however not as in the past, has to be due to the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for علامات الحمل بولد women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.