Why 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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, العاب زوجية regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you can determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.