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's the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain 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. Others are more complex. For example, اوضاع الجماع 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.