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 longer than men in the present, and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only limited solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for العاب زوجية longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower 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 next chart compares male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they were 100 years 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 very modest however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.