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 makes women live longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, العاب زوجية 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 العاب زوجية 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 , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States 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 increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

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