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. Why do women live much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide some solutions. Although we know that there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. 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.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, اضيق وضعية للجماع and Sweden.