Why Are Women Living 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? And how is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have some answers. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain non-biological aspects 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. As you 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

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and اضيق وضعية للجماع females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

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