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 have a longer life span than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men however not as in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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, اوضاع الجماع 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 that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.