Why Women Are More Likely To 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 makes women live more than men do today and why has this advantage increased over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live longer than men in the present and not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US have a much longer life span 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: علامات الحمل بولد The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

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