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 longer than men and why has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live longer than men today however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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 all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.