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. What's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 تحاميل مهبلية survivors, تحاميل مهبلية 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were 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 be very modest, but it grew substantially in the past century.

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