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 reason why women live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements 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, 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. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially in the past century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, اوضاع الجماع France, and Sweden.