Why 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. What is the reason women live longer than men, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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The advantage women had 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 over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you can confirm that the two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.