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. Why do women live more than men do today and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have incomplete solutions. We know there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

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.

There is a widening gap: اوضاع الجماع The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.