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? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men today however not as previously, is to relate to the fact that certain key 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. Certain 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, اوضاع الجماع 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 all countries can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

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

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny but it has risen significantly 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, and Sweden.