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 has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, تحاميل مهبلية but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men today and not previously, has to relate to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest, تحاميل مهبلية but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

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