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 live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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, تحاميل مهبلية (visit the following page) 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 تحاميل مهبلية 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 for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is 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 second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly 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 Sweden.