Why Do Women Have Longer Lives 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 makes women live more than men do today and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only partial answers. We know there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men today however not as in the past, has to do with the fact that several fundamental 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. 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 العاب زوجية women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, العاب زوجية there's an upward trend. and women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was very small It has significantly increased in the past.

You can 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.