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. What makes women live longer than men in the present and how does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we have only partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 line of parity - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows 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 the difference is less that half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: اضيق وضعية للجماع (find more information) female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.