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. Why do women live much longer than men today, and why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men do today and not previously, has to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 العاب زوجية (her comment is here) men and women. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.