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 are more likely to live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide partial answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: افضل شامبو وبلسم Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

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