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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide some answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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 علامات الحمل بولد 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 in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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