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 how does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present but not previously, has to relate to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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 men and women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they were 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: زيوت تطويل الشعر female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially over the last century.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.