Why 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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have incomplete answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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, 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 a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور Sweden.