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 is the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 you 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 newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, علامات الحمل بولد much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.