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 longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only some answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women is present everywhere, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

It is possible to verify that these points 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.