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. What's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men today, but not previously, is to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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 , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, اضيق وضعية للجماع cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small, it has increased substantially over time.

You can confirm that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and اضيق وضعية للجماع Sweden.