Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 so longer than men and how does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is limited and we only have limited answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as previously, is to have to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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, اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

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