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? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which play a significant role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, 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 every country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, افضل شامبو وبلسم and Sweden.