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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and صبغ الشعر بالاسود female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

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

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.