Why Are Women Living 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 longer than men in the present and why is this difference growing in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام and Sweden.