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 much longer than men today and why is this difference growing over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide limited solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live longer than men today, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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, العاب زوجية (discover this info here) 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you will be able to check that these two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.